A Guide To Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody

Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody is like a piece of great literature and needs to be "read" like one. This means that the viewer needs to have an ability to make connections with other literature and with their heart. If the reader is able only to make superficial connections they will come away with the impression that there is no ultimate meaning to life at the end of the movie.

Back in my university days it was very common for the students to forget that "Every great writer is a great deceiver" as well as a "storyteller, teacher, enchanter--but [that] it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer" (Vladimir Nabokov "How to be a Good Reader or Kindness to Authors").

And thus, I had to sit through many a class while my fellow students destroyed literature with their ignorance and cruelty. The youngest and most beautiful girls would swoon at Nabokov and Wallace Stevens and say it was so beautiful and wonderful, drooling sick and sugary syrup from their mouths, but never understanding exactly why the literature was beautiful. I once, heard a beautiful girl, accustomed to being thought intelligent in high school, tell the professor that she loved T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland because it was dreamy and had mermaids.

And then, there is the intellectual student. These are the ones with dour faces and black-rimmed glasses and mouths that know big words. These never understand anything and all great literature is nihilistic and nothing to them. They drone on, explaining why the literature was great -- because it means nothing and has no meaning (actually, they're too blind to know meaning when they run into it). These go on to power positions in politics or universities where they attempt steal the joy and meaning of learning and living from the rest of us.

These two types of "readers," the sugary girls and the educated idiots are bad readers and will not understand Mr. Nobody, but will shape nearly all opinion about it.

"the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense"(Vladimir Nabokov "Kindness to Authors").

Here are a few connections I've noticed upon completing a first viewing. There must be much more:

Literature:
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
"Annabelle Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe
Lolita by Vladimir Nobokov
The Odyssey by Homer
Bible

Movies:
Groundhog Day with Bill Murry
It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart
The Matrix with Keanu Reeves
Dead Man with Johnny Depp
The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland

Symbolism:
Water
Muses
Trains
Tunnels
Colors

And ultimately, these connections to the wider universe are only road markers, pointing us to the meaning of Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody, which is about the most important connection of all.

Mr. Nobody, Jaco Van Dormael's Sublime Universe

In the year 2092 Nemo Nobody is 118 years old and the last mortal human. A journalist asks Nemo what life was like back when humans were mortal and Nemo replies:

"There were cars that polluted. We smoked cigarettes. We ate meat. We did everything we can't do in this dump and it was wonderful."

I haven't enjoyed a movie as much as Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody in years. It's like Vladimir Nabokov on screen. Brilliant, provoking, intelligent, playful, beautiful, pitiful, awful and awesome -- Sublime.

Graceful Choices and the Freedom to Make Them

"We cannot go back. That's why it's hard to choose. You have to make the right choice. As long as you don't choose, everything remains possible" (Nemo in the film Mr. Nobody)

I haven't had the opportunity to view Mr. Nobody, as it hasn't been released in my part of the world, but it seems to be about the many choices a person is faced with and the ramifications of those choices which in turn leads to the many possible lives a person can or could live.

It seems that this film has left some with the feeling that life is beautiful eye candy with no absolute meaning.

"As long as you don't choose, everything remains possible." If we don't choose, then another will choose for us, and often it is the opportunists and power-hungry that take advantage of our inability to make a choice. Not making a choice is a choice -- the choice to be powerless and allow others to make choices for us -- to remain a helpless and dependant child.

"As long as you don't choose, everything remains possible" for evil to succeed unhindered.

This is the problem with most societies and groups of people. They think that choosing a certain leader will be an easier choice than having to take personal responsibility for the choices they make. The leader will make the choices and pass the laws, which always end up limiting choice, even banning certain choices.

We see this with laws and with certain fundamentalist religions. The law gets carried away and says "Thou Shalt Not," rather than allowing a person the freedom to make a choice for themselves based upon the knowledge they possess and the risks they are willing to take.

And because we cannot go back in time and make the "right" choice it is very important that a society is free to make choices. A society where there is no freedom is one in which one is trapped in the choices they have made and cannot move forward or improve their situation with new choices. A free society must rely upon Grace as a crutch to hold it up when parts of it fail.

When there is no freedom to choose we see situations such as the recently publicised case in Iran in which a woman was sentenced to be stoned to death for having affairs with two men after her husband was murdered. In Iran this woman's choice leads to death. In a free society in which one is allowed the choice to make what may seem immoral decisions, this woman would be allowed the choice to mend her ways and get on with life and Grace would overlook her past mistakes if it saw that she was making healthier and wiser choices. If Grace couldn't cover her, she could make the choice to move to a place where no one knew of her past.

In societies where choice has been given over to a few elites there is no freedom to move about freely, travel where one chooses, move up in the world, leave bad relationships, eat what one chooses, work where one chooses, worship how one chooses, smoke where one chooses, wear what one chooses, etc., etc...

These are Disgraced societies.

In order for a movie such as Mr. Nobody to even come to fruition there must still be free choice alive and well in the world. This movie is about personal choice and love, but there is no personal choice or pursuit of true love unless one lives in a society in which the possibilities are endless.

My personal belief is that each of us has been chosen for the moment in time that we live in. If we don't make a choice to seize hold of the moment and the role we've been handed, another will step in and fill the role; but will another do it as well us us? The trick is taking that incredible role and doing the best with it that we possibly can. We've each been prepared for those great pivotal moments of choice and can bring unique passion and knowledge to the role we play.

We cannot go back, but we can move forward.

Shakespeare's Retelling of an Old Tale: Romeo and Juliet

"When good manners shall lie in one or two men's hands, and they unwash't too, 'tis a foul thing" (Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, I.V)

"Marry, sir, 'tis an ill cook that cannot lick his
own fingers: therefore he that cannot lick his
fingers goes not with me" (Romeo and Juliet, IV.II)

I have finished reading William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet for the first time. For years I have deliberately avoided reading it due to its overly quoted sap. Lines such as "O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?"(II.I) have made it into something that cloys the senses.

But, of course, Romeo and Juliet is not at all the thing that the masses have made it into and the serving people always have something intelligent to say. In Romeo and Juliet the servants often let us know what they think about those, like our politicians and others who can cook up a feast to serve to others, but don't dare take a taste of it themselves.

And, of course, Romeo and Juliet is about love, love that knows no boundaries and defies earthly confines. A love that does not parade itself and is secret and gives no material gain to anyone. It is the story of Passover and Easter and of breaking Time's grip.

Shakespeare is always about Time and of a world most of us don't even know how to dream of. I have found it nearly impossible to understand Shakespeare until one has actually experienced a transformative or eye-opening time in one's life. Until one has actually lived the words of Shakespeare they cannot understand him on anything other than the superficial level.

And it is no wonder that Romeo and Juliet has been made into something cheap and vain. I never would have understood this play a few years ago. This is not merely a tale of two "star-cross'd" lovers or feuding families who would not approve of their marriage. This is about a love that most of us, even those that think they have been loved or in love, will never understand. I can think of only two comparable and secret love stories: Abraham and Sarah and that of Jesus and His Father.

image: Thisbe by John William Waterhouse

Albert Jay Nock's Word To The Remnants

"Isaiah's Job" by Albert Jay Nock, The Atlantic Monthly, 1936:

One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a political-economic doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no defect. At the end, he said with great earnestness: "I have a mission to the masses. I feel that I am called to get the ear of the people. I shall devote the rest of my life to spreading my doctrine far and wide among the population. What do you think?"

An embarrassing question in any case, and doubly so under the circumstances, because my acquaintance is a very learned man, one of the three or four really first-class minds that Europe produced in his generation; and naturally I, as one of the unlearned, was inclined to regard his lightest word with reverence amounting to awe. Still, I reflected, even the greatest mind can not possibly know everything, and I was pretty sure he had not had my opportunities for observing the masses of mankind, and that therefore I probably knew them better than he did. So I mustered courage to say that he had no such mission and would do well to get the idea out of his head at once; he would find that the masses would not care two pins for his doctrine, and still less for himself, since in such circumstances the popular favourite is generally some Barabbas. I even went so far as to say (he is a Jew) that his idea seemed to show that he was not very well up on his own native literature. He smiled at my jest, and asked what I meant by it; and I referred him to the story of the prophet Isaiah.

It occurred to me then that this story is much worth recalling just now when so many wise men and soothsayers appear to be burdened with a message to the masses. Dr. Townsend has a message, Father Coughlin has one, Mr. Upton Sinclair, Mr. Lippmann, Mr. Chase and the planned economy brethren, Mr. Tugwell and the New Dealers, Mr. Smith and Liberty Leaguers – the list is endless. I can not remember a time when so many energumens were so variously proclaiming the Word to the multitude and telling them what they must do to be saved. This being so, it occurred to me, as I say, that the story of Isaiah might have something in it to steady and compose the human spirit until this tyranny of windiness is overpast. I shall paraphrase the story in our common speech, since it has to be pieced out from various sources; and inasmuch as respectable scholars have thought fit to put out a whole new version of the Bible in the American vernacular, I shall take shelter behind them, if need be, against the charge of dealing irreverently with the Sacred Scriptures.

The prophet's career began at the end of King Uzziah's reign, say about 740 B.C. This reign was uncommonly long, almost half a century, and apparently prosperous. It was one of those prosperous reigns, however – like the reign of Marcus Aurelius at Rome, or the administration of Eubulus at Athens, or of Mr. Coolidge at Washington – where at the end the prosperity suddenly peters out and things go by the board with a resounding crash.

In the year of Uzziah's death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. "Tell them what a worthless lot they are." He said, "Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don't mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you," He added, "that it won't do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life."


Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job – in fact, he had asked for it – but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so – if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start – was there any sense in starting it? "Ah," the Lord said, "you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it."

II

Apparently, then, if the Lord’s word is good for anything – I do not offer any opinion about that, – the only element in Judean society that was particularly worth bothering about was the Remnant. Isaiah seems finally to have got it through his head that this was the case; that nothing was to be expected from the masses, but that if anything substantial were ever to be done in Judea, the Remnant would have to do it. This is a very striking and suggestive idea; but before going on to explore it, we need to be quite clear about our terms. What do we mean by the masses, and what by the Remnant?

As the word masses is commonly used, it suggests agglomerations of poor and underprivileged people, labouring people, proletarians, and it means nothing like that; it means simply the majority. The mass-man is one who has neither the force of intellect to apprehend the principles issuing in what we know as the humane life, nor the force of character to adhere to those principles steadily and strictly as laws of conduct; and because such people make up the great and overwhelming majority of mankind, they are called collectively the masses. The line of differentiation between the masses and the Remnant is set invariably by quality, not by circumstance. The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either.

The picture which Isaiah presents of the Judean masses is most unfavorable. In his view, the mass-man – be he high or be he lowly, rich or poor, prince or pauper – gets off very badly. He appears as not only weak-minded and weak-willed, but as by consequence knavish, arrogant, grasping, dissipated, unprincipled, unscrupulous. The mass-woman also gets off badly, as sharing all the mass-man’s untoward qualities, and contributing a few of her own in the way of vanity and laziness, extravagance and foible. The list of luxury-products that she patronized is interesting; it calls to mind the women’s page of a Sunday newspaper in 1928, or the display set forth in one of our professedly "smart" periodicals. In another place, Isaiah even recalls the affectations that we used to know by the name "flapper gait" and the "debutante slouch." It may be fair to discount Isaiah’s vivacity a little for prophetic fervour; after all, since his real job was not to convert the masses but to brace and reassure the Remnant, he probably felt that he might lay it on indiscriminately and as thick as he liked – in fact, that he was expected to do so. But even so, the Judean mass-man must have been a most objectionable individual, and the mass-woman utterly odious.


If the modern spirit, whatever that may be, is disinclined towards taking the Lord’s word at its face value (as I hear is the case), we may observe that Isaiah’s testimony to the character of the masses has strong collateral support from respectable Gentile authority. Plato lived into the administration of Eubulus, when Athens was at the peak of its jazz-and-paper era, and he speaks of the Athenian masses with all Isaiah’s fervency, even comparing them to a herd of ravenous wild beasts. Curiously, too, he applies Isaiah’s own word remnant to the worthier portion of Athenian society; "there is but a very small remnant," he says, of those who possess a saving force of intellect and force of character – too small, preciously as to Judea, to be of any avail against the ignorant and vicious preponderance of the masses.

But Isaiah was a preacher and Plato a philosopher; and we tend to regard preachers and philosophers rather as passive observers of the drama of life than as active participants. Hence in a matter of this kind their judgment might be suspected of being a little uncompromising, a little acrid, or as the French say, saugrenu. We may therefore bring forward another witness who was preeminently a man of affairs, and whose judgment can not lie under this suspicion. Marcus Aurelius was ruler of the greatest of empires, and in that capacity he not only had the Roman mass-man under observation, but he had him on his hands twenty-four hours a day for eighteen years. What he did not know about him was not worth knowing and what he thought of him is abundantly attested on almost every page of the little book of jottings which he scribbled offhand from day to day, and which he meant for no eye but his own ever to see.

This view of the masses is the one that we find prevailing at large among the ancient authorities whose writings have come down to us. In the eighteenth century, however, certain European philosophers spread the notion that the mass-man, in his natural state, is not at all the kind of person that earlier authorities made him out to be, but on the contrary, that he is a worthy object of interest. His untowardness is the effect of environment, an effect for which "society" is somehow responsible. If only his environment permitted him to live according to his lights, he would undoubtedly show himself to be quite a fellow; and the best way to secure a more favourable environment for him would be to let him arrange it for himself. The French Revolution acted powerfully as a springboard for this idea, projecting its influence in all directions throughout Europe.


On this side of the ocean a whole new continent stood ready for a large-scale experiment with this theory. It afforded every conceivable resource whereby the masses might develop a civilization made in their own likeness and after their own image. There was no force of tradition to disturb them in their preponderance, or to check them in a thoroughgoing disparagement of the Remnant. Immense natural wealth, unquestioned predominance, virtual isolation, freedom from external interference and the fear of it, and, finally, a century and a half of time – such are the advantages which the mass-man has had in bringing forth a civilization which should set the earlier preachers and philosophers at naught in their belief that nothing substantial can be expected from the masses, but only from the Remnant.

His success is unimpressive. On the evidence so far presented one must say, I think, that the mass-man’s conception of what life has to offer, and his choice of what to ask from life, seem now to be pretty well what they were in the times of Isaiah and Plato; and so too seem the catastrophic social conflicts and convulsions in which his views of life and his demands on life involve him. I do not wish to dwell on this, however, but merely to observe that the monstrously inflated importance of the masses has apparently put all thought of a possible mission to the Remnant out of the modern prophet’s head. This is obviously quite as it should be, provided that the earlier preachers and philosophers were actually wrong, and that all final hope of the human race is actually centred in the masses. If, on the other hand, it should turn out that the Lord and Isaiah and Plato and Marcus Aurelius were right in their estimate of the relative social value of the masses and the Remnant, the case is somewhat different. Moreover, since with everything in their favour the masses have so far given such an extremely discouraging account of themselves, it would seem that the question at issue between these two bodies of opinion might most profitably be reopened.

III

But without following up this suggestion, I wish only, as I said, to remark the fact that as things now stand Isaiah's job seems rather to go begging. Everyone with a message nowadays is, like my venerable European friend, eager to take it to the masses. His first, last and only thought is of mass-acceptance and mass-approval. His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses' attention and interest. This attitude towards the masses is so exclusive, so devout, that one is reminded of the troglodytic monster described by Plato, and the assiduous crowd at the entrance to its cave, trying obsequiously to placate it and win its favour, trying to interpret its inarticulate noises, trying to find out what it wants, and eagerly offering it all sorts of things that they think might strike its fancy.


The main trouble with all this is its reaction upon the mission itself. It necessitates an opportunist sophistication of one's doctrine, which profoundly alters its character and reduces it to a mere placebo. If, say, you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which means an appeal to the masses; and this, in turn, means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character that the masses exhibit. If you are an educator, say with a college on your hands, you wish to get as many students as possible, and you whittle down your requirements accordingly. If a writer, you aim at getting many readers; if a publisher, many purchasers; if a philosopher, many disciples; if a reformer, many converts; if a musician, many auditors; and so on. But as we see on all sides, in the realization of these several desires, the prophetic message is so heavily adulterated with trivialities, in every instance, that its effect on the masses is merely to harden them in their sins. Meanwhile, the Remnant, aware of this adulteration and of the desires that prompt it, turn their backs on the prophet and will have nothing to do with him or his message.

Isaiah, on the other hand, worked under no such disabilities. He preached to the masses only in the sense that he preached publicly. Anyone who liked might listen; anyone who liked might pass by. He knew that the Remnant would listen; and knowing also that nothing was to be expected of the masses under any circumstances, he made no specific appeal to them, did not accommodate his message to their measure in any way, and did not care two straws whether they heeded it or not. As a modern publisher might put it, he was not worrying about circulation or about advertising. Hence, with all such obsessions quite out of the way, he was in a position to do his level best, without fear or favour, and answerable only to his august Boss.

If a prophet were not too particular about making money out of his mission or getting a dubious sort of notoriety out of it, the foregoing considerations would lead one to say that serving the Remnant looks like a good job. An assignment that you can really put your back into, and do your best without thinking about results, is a real job; whereas serving the masses is at best only half a job, considering the inexorable conditions that the masses impose upon their servants. They ask you to give them what they want, they insist upon it, and will take nothing else; and following their whims, their irrational changes of fancy, their hot and cold fits, is a tedious business, to say nothing of the fact that what they want at any time makes very little call on one’s resources of prophesy. The Remnant, on the other hand, want only the best you have, whatever that may be. Give them that, and they are satisfied; you have nothing more to worry about. The prophet of the American masses must aim consciously at the lowest common denominator of intellect, taste and character among 120,000,000 people; and this is a distressing task. The prophet of the Remnant, on the contrary, is in the enviable position of Papa Haydn in the household of Prince Esterhazy. All Haydn had to do was keep forking out the very best music he knew how to produce, knowing it would be understood and appreciated by those for whom he produced it, and caring not a button what anyone else thought of it; and that makes a good job.


In a sense, nevertheless, as I have said, it is not a rewarding job. If you can tough the fancy of the masses, and have the sagacity to keep always one jump ahead of their vagaries and vacillations, you can get good returns in money from serving the masses, and good returns also in a mouth-to-ear type of notoriety:

Digito monstrari et dicier, Hic est!

We all know innumerable politicians, journalists, dramatists, novelists and the like, who have done extremely well by themselves in these ways. Taking care of the Remnant, on the contrary, holds little promise of any such rewards. A prophet of the Remnant will not grow purse-proud on the financial returns from his work, nor is it likely that he will get any great renown out of it. Isaiah’s case was exceptional to this second rule, and there are others, but not many.

It may be thought, then, that while taking care of the Remnant is no doubt a good job, it is not an especially interesting job because it is as a rule so poorly paid. I have my doubts about this. There are other compensations to be got out of a job besides money and notoriety, and some of them seem substantial enough to be attractive. Many jobs which do not pay well are yet profoundly interesting, as, for instance, the job of research student in the sciences is said to be; and the job of looking after the Remnant seems to me, as I have surveyed it for many years from my seat in the grandstand, to be as interesting as any that can be found in the world.

IV

What chiefly makes it so, I think, is that in any given society the Remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity. You do not know, and will never know, more than two things about them. You can be sure of those – dead sure, as our phrase is – but you will never be able to make even a respectable guess at anything else. You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you do know, and no more: First, that they exist; second, that they will find you. Except for these two certainties, working for the Remnant means working in impenetrable darkness; and this, I should say, is just the condition calculated most effectively to pique the interest of any prophet who is properly gifted with the imagination, insight and intellectual curiosity necessary to a successful pursuit of his trade.

The fascination and the despair of the historian, as he looks back upon Isaiah's Jewry, upon Plato's Athens, or upon Rome of the Antonines, is the hope of discovering and laying bare the "substratum of right-thinking and well-doing" which he knows must have existed somewhere in those societies because no kind of collective life can possibly go on without it. He finds tantalizing intimations of it here and there in many places, as in the Greek Anthology, in the scrapbook of Aulus Gellius, in the poems of Ausonius, and in the brief and touching tribute, Bene merenti, bestowed upon the unknown occupants of Roman tombs. But these are vague and fragmentary; they lead him nowhere in his search for some kind of measure on this substratum, but merely testify to what he already knew a priori – that the substratum did somewhere exist. Where it was, how substantial it was, what its power of self-assertion and resistance was – of all this they tell him nothing.

Similarly, when the historian of two thousand years hence, or two hundred years, looks over the available testimony to the quality of our civilization and tries to get any kind of clear, competent evidence concerning the substratum of right-thinking and well-doing which he knows must have been here, he will have a devil of a time finding it. When he has assembled all he can and has made even a minimum allowance for speciousness, vagueness, and confusion of motive, he will sadly acknowledge that his net result is simply nothing. A Remnant were here, building a substratum like coral insects; so much he knows, but he will find nothing to put him on the track of who and where and how many they were and what their work was like.

Concerning all this, too, the prophet of the present knows precisely as much and as little as the historian of the future; and that, I repeat, is what makes his job seem to me so profoundly interesting. One of the most suggestive episodes recounted in the Bible is that of a prophet's attempt – the only attempt of the kind on the record, I believe – to count up the Remnant. Elijah had fled from persecution into the desert, where the Lord presently overhauled him and asked what he was doing so far away from his job. He said that he was running away, not because he was a coward, but because all the Remnant had been killed off except himself. He had got away only by the skin of his teeth, and, he being now all the Remnant there was, if he were killed the True Faith would go flat. The Lord replied that he need not worry about that, for even without him the True Faith could probably manage to squeeze along somehow if it had to; "and as for your figures on the Remnant," He said, "I don't mind telling you that there are seven thousand of them back there in Israel whom it seems you have not heard of, but you may take My word for it that there they are."

At that time, probably the population of Israel could not run to much more than a million or so; and a Remnant of seven thousand out of a million is a highly encouraging percentage for any prophet. With seven thousand of the boys on his side, there was no great reason for Elijah to feel lonesome; and incidentally, that would be something for the modern prophet of the Remnant to think of when he has a touch of the blues. But the main point is that if Elijah the Prophet could not make a closer guess on the number of the Remnant than he made when he missed it by seven thousand, anyone else who tackled the problem would only waste his time.

The other certainty which the prophet of the Remnant may always have is that the Remnant will find him. He may rely on that with absolute assurance. They will find him without his doing anything about it; in fact, if he tries to do anything about it, he is pretty sure to put them off. He does not need to advertise for them nor resort to any schemes of publicity to get their attention. If he is a preacher or a public speaker, for example, he may be quite indifferent to going on show at receptions, getting his picture printed in the newspapers, or furnishing autobiographical material for publication on the side of "human interest." If a writer, he need not make a point of attending any pink teas, autographing books at wholesale, nor entering into any specious freemasonry with reviewers. All this and much more of the same order lies in the regular and necessary routine laid down for the prophet of the masses; it is, and must be, part of the great general technique of getting the mass-man's ear – or as our vigorous and excellent publicist, Mr. H. L. Mencken, puts it, the technique of boob-bumping. The prophet of the Remnant is not bound to this technique. He may be quite sure that the Remnant will make their own way to him without any adventitious aids; and not only so, but if they find him employing any such aids, as I said, it is ten to one that they will smell a rat in them and will sheer off.

The certainty that the Remnant will find him, however, leaves the prophet as much in the dark as ever, as helpless as ever in the matter of putting any estimate of any kind upon the Remnant; for, as appears in the case of Elijah, he remains ignorant of who they are that have found him or where they are or how many. They did not write in and tell him about it, after the manner of those who admire the vedettes of Hollywood, nor yet do they seek him out and attach themselves to his person. They are not that kind. They take his message much as drivers take the directions on a roadside signboard – that is, with very little thought about the signboard, beyond being gratefully glad that it happened to be there, but with every thought about the directions.

This impersonal attitude of the Remnant wonderfully enhances the interest of the imaginative prophet's job. Once in a while, just about often enough to keep his intellectual curiosity in good working order, he will quite accidentally come upon some distinct reflection of his own message in an unsuspected quarter. This enables him to entertain himself in his leisure moments with agreeable speculations about the course his message may have taken in reaching that particular quarter, and about what came of it after it got there. Most interesting of all are those instances, if one could only run them down (but one may always speculate about them), where the recipient himself no longer knows where nor when nor from whom he got the message – or even where, as sometimes happens, he has forgotten that he got it anywhere and imagines that it is all a self-sprung idea of his own.

Such instances as these are probably not infrequent, for, without presuming to enroll ourselves among the Remnant, we can all no doubt remember having found ourselves suddenly under the influence of an idea, the source of which we cannot possibly identify. "It came to us afterward," as we say; that is, we are aware of it only after it has shot up full-grown in our minds, leaving us quite ignorant of how and when and by what agency it was planted there and left to germinate. It seems highly probable that the prophet's message often takes some such course with the Remnant.

If, for example, you are a writer or a speaker or a preacher, you put forth an idea which lodges in the Unbewußtsein of a casual member of the Remnant and sticks fast there. For some time it is inert; then it begins to fret and fester until presently it invades the man's conscious mind and, as one might say, corrupts it. Meanwhile, he has quite forgotten how he came by the idea in the first instance, and even perhaps thinks he has invented it; and in those circumstances, the most interesting thing of all is that you never know what the pressure of that idea will make him do.

For these reasons it appears to me that Isaiah’s job is not only good but also extremely interesting; and especially so at the present time when nobody is doing it. If I were young and had the notion of embarking in the prophetical line, I would certainly take up this branch of the business; and therefore I have no hesitation about recommending it as a career for anyone in that position. It offers an open field, with no competition; our civilization so completely neglects and disallows the Remnant that anyone going in with an eye single to their service might pretty well count on getting all the trade there is.

Even assuming that there is some social salvage to be screened out of the masses, even assuming that the testimony of history to their social value is a little too sweeping, that it depresses hopelessness a little too far, one must yet perceive, I think, that the masses have prophets enough and to spare. Even admitting that in the teeth of history that hope of the human race may not be quite exclusively centred in the Remnant, one must perceive that they have social value enough to entitle them to some measure of prophetic encouragement and consolation, and that our civilization allows them none whatever. Every prophetic voice is addressed to the masses, and to them alone; the voice of the pulpit, the voice of education, the voice of politics, of literature, drama, journalism – all these are directed towards the masses exclusively, and they marshal the masses in the way that they are going.

One might suggest, therefore, that aspiring prophetical talent may well turn to another field. Sat patriae Priamoque datum – whatever obligation of the kind may be due the masses is already monstrously overpaid. So long as the masses are taking up the tabernacle of Moloch and Chiun, their images, and following the star of their god Buncombe, they will have no lack of prophets to point the way that leadeth to the More Abundant Life; and hence a few of those who feel the prophetic afflatus might do better to apply themselves to serving the Remnant. It is a good job, an interesting job, much more interesting than serving the masses; and moreover it is the only job in our whole civilization, as far as I know, that offers a virgin field.

Swimming Against the Current

Here are some snippets from a June 5, 1939 LIFE prediction of life in 1960, inspired by the New York World's Fair and General Motor's "Futurama" display:

"When Americans of 1960 take their two-month vacations, they drive to the great parklands on giant express highways. A two-way skein consists of four 50-m.p.h. lanes on each of the outer edges; two pairs of 75-m.p.h. lanes in the center, two lanes for 100m-m.p.h. express traffic. Cars change from lane to lane at specified intervals, on signal from spaced control towers which can stop and start all traffic by radio. Being out of its driver's control, each car is safe against accident....

".....Off the highway, the driver dawdles again at his own speed and risk."

"The highways skirt the great cities. But the happiest people live in one-factory farm-villages producing one small industrial item and their own farm produce. Strip planting protects the valley fields against erosion. The land is really greener than it was in 1939. Federal laws forbid the wanton cutting of wooded hillsides."

"Cures for cancer and infantile paralysis have extended man's life span and his wife's skin is still perfect at the age of 75."

"Electronic microscopes literally see everything."

"On every front America in 1960 knows more about unleashing the best energies in its citizens. Nearly everyone is a high-school graduate. The talented get the best education in the world. More people are interested in life, the world, themselves and in making a better world. Politics and emotion still slow progress. But these obstructions are treated with dwindling patience in 1960."

I wonder why they were so sure that America would change so quickly in 21 years from what it was in 1939? Was this sheer optimism or a plan in the works? And what made these strange people so sure that such a monotone and boring collective would actually achieve a cure for cancer? As long as people are confined to "happy" farm collectives, and only the "talented" get education, and all traffic is controlled, and emotionless automatons are the norm there will be no cure for cancer.

Curing cancer requires that the parts of the brain intimately linked to emotion are fully operational and creative. Curing cancer requires an unleashing of individuality and freedom, for this is how it will be fought within the body's systems.

I think, we can see a bit how cancer operates on a daily basis in our world. It seems to start small and grow when a population doesn't recognize it as a threat, when individuals are prohibited from defending themselves and kept ignorant. The cancer grows and attacks a weak organ, such as another company or group. It gets the body to attack the weak organ too. Then the energy, or money is sucked from the company or group of people in the form of a settlement or other form. This energy is then given to the cancer to feed upon, thus making it increase in power and allowing it to spread into other systems until it is eating up the body and too late to fight. The host dies, which then kills the cancer because there remains nothing to feed it.

It is very difficult and bloody when a cancer has grown so large that the entire body must unite to fight against it. But if each individual cell were given power and knowledge, it, along with its immediate neighbors could stall or destroy the cancer before it grew and attacked a large organ. This little battle would barely even be noticed and not lead to blood and death.

A completely unified and controlled highway system as envisioned in 1939 is one also susceptible to disaster. Perhaps, it is safer, but it is not free or pleasurable. It also is like pushing a population of handicapped drivers down the road. They forget how to use their muscles and atrophy from lack of use.

Ask a person in a wheel chair if they would rather be pushed around the rest of their life, have doors opened for them, and elevators lift them; or walk even if it meant tripping once in awhile, stubbing their toes, and being called bow legged. Ask the person in the wheel chair if they'd rather be able to ride a bike even if it meant risking that nasty bar in the crotch once in awhile. Chances are they'd laugh and say all those risks are worth freedom and independence. They may cry and say, "Give me the pain. I'll love it because I'm free, I'm standing on these legs, I'm running, and I can carry another if I get the chance."

How does an individual stop to help another on a controlled system that won't let them have that freedom? Doesn't this create a system of people who ignore others because they assume the authorities, Who Ever's In Charge, will take care of the needy? It's an unsafe system that controls our every motion. How do we know the so called higher powers (or powers for hire) will see the problem or that they will have compassion? And how much more will it cost us to pay for this controlling higher power in comparison to what it would have cost a single private individual to be compassionate?

Rather than uniting in giant power groups, rather than driving upon a controlled highway, it would be better for people to get off onto the country roads and dawdle at one's own risk and safety. A giant-controlled highway or social movement is controlled by exterior guides who may not steer us in the correct directions, who may be deceived and deceiving under the guise of safety and public health.

Giant movements do not bring about change, but more of the same. England's Protestants overthrew their monarch for another form of tyranny. Russia's Bolshevik, and France's Revolution were also a despot's dream. The real power is not in confined and controlled power groups who yell and vociferate about morals and speak in us-against-them terms. The real power is when each person as an individual chooses to do the right thing, irregardless of the group, irregardless of the time's moral, political, religious, and scientific values.

A school of fish is netted as a group. A single fish must be caught one at a time. It's quite labor intensive and time consuming for a fisherman to catch every single fish in the pool or in the stream. It's more labor intensive for evil to catch people when they're not in a group to be netted, but must be caught one at a time, and outsmarted with baits and flies. If individuals cannot stand alone, cannot act on their own, then they cannot stand or act as a group either. A group of unwhole and helpless people is a group of mental cripples trampling over town and country, hopped up on false righteousness.

image: Via Appia, Rome, Italy, Paul Vlaar

Boom Town Detroit, America

There are hours and hours of footage on display at YouTube detailing the decay of Detroit. One of the more interesting aspects of them is the music, which is used to say what cannot be conveyed in words or commentary. The commentary of countless individuals tells us what is wrong--on the surface, but does not get to the heart of the problem the way the music does. The music gets deeper and shows us that the decay of Detroit is one of the soul.

The musical choices placed along with the movies take us to a dark and sad place of mourning, a place so despairing that it seems impossible to recover from, as if a heavy blanket of chains pulls the spirit downward into a chasm of nothingness where the sun and warmth cannot reach. Detroit is a haunted place, a dark lady wandering along passages of broken glass and death that does not come. She has been desecrated, used up, and left to lay alone in the remains of a glamorous party, kissed and loved by all, then left alone in her drunkenness, her clothes torn, her dignity spread around by the partiers, the broken glass thrown upon her and a pile of cash showered upon her as everyone walks past, turning the lights out, not caring to lift her out and drive her home.

She had no home. Her home was in the bed of countless men who adorned themselves with her as an ornament, then used her for the night, after dancing with her, feeding her, drugging her, and giving her money for fine clothes.

How do we lift this lost lady from the rubble?

Daily, Detroit burns, the carcass and empty windows stare out as we gaze upon her magnificent ruins which, even though ruins are fantastic in their own right. Nothing Detroit does is small. Even her death is dramatic, drawing the attention of a nation, transfixing us in her grip as we watch her gasping her last breathes.

Detroit could rise, although a humbled and quieter woman, if the doctors would stop leaching her even as she dies, if they would loose her from their vampirism. She does not want money, she wants a Samaritan to stop and help her. No longer does she want the wealthy and popular man, but the gentle and poor outcast with a heart and strength to lift her to the inn.

And this disease that Detroit has is slowly spreading across the body of America, but because no other city is as grand, the death is less noticeable. This disease began hundreds of years ago in the mountains and streams when gold, silver, and copper were discovered.

It's called Gold Fever. Creek beds are dredged for it, hillsides razed, and entire neighborhoods removed leaving giant toxic lakes in their wake.

In the early days of the boom town, the recovery was natural, the scars less obvious. The reason for this was that the majority of those who arrived in boom towns were not there for gold, but to serve the mining industry with real commodities until the operation ran out. The boom town was known from the beginning as a temporary residence which would be replaced by permanent and quieter settlements founded upon real human industry and value, especially agriculture.

The modern boom towns founded upon copper and steel grew larger and more vibrant than the old boom towns of the wild west. But these modern boom towns desecrated the very people who lived in them. Butte, MT forced the majority of its residents out in order to tear apart the hill that once lit up the night with life and architecture. Rather than wealth and life, the hill was turned into a poison pit, the largest toxic lake on the continent. Where is the value? Is it people and homes or is it in metals?

Go to a steel mill town, such as Duluth along Lake Superior and it resembles Detroit with the empty buildings, the open fields, the company town with empty churches, the streets pitted, the tracks turning wild. There is the tourist area along Park Point, but it serves epicures and souvenir collectors, rather than any lasting or useful commodity.

Detroit was a modern boom town founded upon quick money, fast living, metals and petroleum. The citizens fell for the illusion, rather than following the example of slower and independent industry. The new boom towns do not settle the land or call people out to farm and set up shop around them. When the operators have cleaned out the soil and souls, they leave for another place to use up. Now, they're in China and poor countries building a new set of boom towns. They don't care how many people they displace, poison, or leave wretched and rotting. People have not value to these boom town operators.

The modern world seems unable to see the cycle of the boom town. The residents linger and wonder what happened. Rather than creating real industry, smaller, and less glamorous, they wait for the gold to rain down from the sky in the form of government subsidies. And the money rains down, while at the same time the taxes rise. And again the boom town is kept alive long enough to strip mine the people of everything they have, and more than they have. This time it's the corrupt elected officials and the gangs doing the mining.

In the old days, the corrupt officials and gangs were hunted down by citizen vigilante groups who valued human life more than gold. But now, it is a crime for a law loving person to defend himself, and he is told to submit himself, to allow the corruption to ravage him. And where the corruption flourishes, a wonderful new mining operation, called prison, springs up. America has one of the largest, if not the largest prison industry in the world. If memory serves correctly, America imprisons more people per capita than Russia or China.

And now, the feeding frenzy upon a paralyzed country is in full force. America, lays like a patient upon the operating table. She has been used, her education has been a false one that wastes young adult's lives creating a lie called teenage rebellion, an unnatural right of passage that only began displaying itself when young adults were told they had to remain children until they turned 18.

America still bases her wealth upon metals because so much of her technology is dependent upon the rare metals that only China is willing to extract for the rest of the world's appetites. A hybrid auto actually destroys the planet because of the slave labor it required to loot the land. And a solar cell uses these rare China metals which will one day run out when the boom is over.

There are only a few constant and replenishable commodities. The most important is human industriousness and creativity which is unleashed when a person is free from government, religious tithes, and corporate monopoly. When a people are free to travel unchecked, choose their educational strategy, and work for them self without strip mine taxes they flourish and benefit all around them. The land, if owned by private citizens, is the pride and wealth of nations. Combined with man, the land is a perfect marriage. It is mankind that gives anything its value, not the things that give mankind value.

The reason Detroit crumbles in wretchedness is that its soul, the humans who live within it are wretched. They were not taught that they are valuable and that they have the power of the golden touch, that it was not the auto industry that made them rich, but they who made the auto industry golden, they who were the mine stripped bare by the Boom town operators. Detroit has been with held the knowledge of its dignity and that mankind is the only mine that can and does replenish itself.

Detroit, and all of America should remember that throwing money upon a dead body cannot resurrect it, and that it is immoral to burden a robbed person with higher and higher taxes. It is immoral to take from one to give to another. This is a great lie that fills the pockets of corruption.

When will America see that it is being strip mined and that now the operation is being escalated at a quickened and desperate pace which if not halted will leave it nothing but burned out buildings and toxic lakes? We don't need plastic surgery, or false fronts erected to create happy illusions for us to gaze upon in self-satisfied arrogance. We need to learn that even in a rougher and less perfect state we have more value than any bag of gold, that it is mercy and not sacrifice that makes the world better and eases the pain and hardship. Those suffering in the world don't need us to sacrifice our life and money for them, they need us to be strong and whole enough to extend mercy.

Is your government working for you or are you working for it?

"....a moderate Tax upon any People, both by keeping them constantly employed [enslaved], by rendering them therefore more attached to those who procure them Employment [forced to work for another in order to pay taxes, since personal employment although more satisfying and productive is also irregular at times due to the trial and error of it], and by inducing a more vigorous Spirit of Industry [enslavement], really profited a Country at large, tended to make them a quiet & happy [enslaved, worn out, despairing], and effected that Subordination & Distinction of Ranks in Society[taxes create class distinctions, disparity, poverty], which is so wanted here" (Ambrose Serle, secretary to General William Howe, Philadelphia, 9 Mar. 1778).

On Time

Time. That eternally and infinitely timeless subject, time. There are so many ways to look at it and wonder and wonder.

Time is divided, subdivided, chopped up and categorized in so many ways, depending on the time of day and the age in which one looks at it. Historical time is most often labelled as linear, running along a straight line in one direction from some point buried in the sands of, well, time.

A day runs from morning to night for some and from sunset to sunset for others.

We often say, when not at a destination exactly when planned, that we are late, not on time. But we are always on time, because we live on time, every moment is time.

We say that some things are "timeless," which means that they transcend time, and are not ever on time at all because a timeless thing is not pegged to our time's segment upon the line.

But it seems quite evident that a straight linear time is not how time is organized at all. It must be circular, although it may not be repetitive.

Our earth is always hinting at the roundness of time. Everything moves in circular, spinning, and rotating motions.

What if time began at a point upon a circle and life is composed of two opposing forces that also began upon that first moment, and these two opposites are repelled from each other? If the two opposing forces are repelled they move in opposing directions from each other around the circle of time, thinking that they are going in opposite directions and further away from each other.

And for awhile the two opposites are spaced very far apart across the diameter of time. But as they each proceed further along the circle they become nearer and near each other until the moment they each reach the same point. The two forces will either merge with each other, becoming one or clash violently.

In the end the very thing we believe we are running from, that is opposed to everything we believe in will be the very thing we bump into or become.

This may explain, too, why we may be running out of time, because we are nearing the other side of the circle's diameter, drawing nearer that point of merge or clash (see "New Theory Nixes 'Dark Energy': Says Time is Disappearing from the Universe," 13 Sep. 2009, www.dailygalaxy.com).

image: oil press

The Original Gold Second

"We speak of one thing being like some other thing when what we are really craving to do is to describe something that is like nothing on earth" (Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister)

Like. But isn't. Not exact, not the thing itself. Like.

How does one explain, give the meaning, not a mere semblance of the meaning? This is the ache and the yearning, the chain of being a human on earth. It's as if; like being a prisoner bolted to a cell with a heavy chain that allows one to get near the key, get near the door, nearly touch it....but not quite.

"Certain mind pictures have become so adulterated by the concept of 'time' that we have come to believe in the actual existence of a permanently moving bright fissure (the point of perception) between our retrospective eternity which we cannot recall and the prospective one which we cannot know. We are not really able to measure time because no gold second is kept in a case in Paris but, quite frankly, do you not imagine a length of several hours more exactly than a length of several miles?" (Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister)

There is no "gold second" to measure, although we do measure time with those adulterated "mind pictures." Somehow, we forget the meaning and imagery used to make meaning, which due to our forgetfulness look adulterated, unfamiliar. Because these pictures appear foreign to our present we say they are of another time. Why this is, I cannot tell.

When we read Shakespeare we must pull out our history and dictionary to understand what his meaning is....because the images, the likenesses have become adulterated. Would a gold second fade and disappear this way? Is it the gold second, the meanings that have faded, or is it us? Did someone drop the gold second and did the janitor sweep it under the display case? Are we reading backwards?

If time is moving forwards and our meaning, our images are only copies of other things; like something else that came before, then the future is only a copy of a copy of a copy, and so on. We are like wine that has been watered down, stretched out, and made clear.

Where is that original cask of wine, that golden first, and how good must it have been to have lasted all this while, after all of these adulterations?

Older than the hills

"The child is the father of the man," a line from Wordsworth that has become a staple amongst Western literary quotations, and for good reason. It is so well said, so succinct, and so cyclical.

It is the spring board from which I will jump into some musing, observation, and opinion.

Wordsworth and his fellow poets of the Lake School were a band of Romantics, or as we would term them in more modern terms, "hippees." They wanted to get back to nature and enjoy free love away from industrial air. But the difference between them and our now aged hippees is that they really were creative, talented, and wise at times. They were quite industrious and have given generation to following generations, unlike the aged hippees who have often trampled upon the generations that followed them, or as Wordsworth put it:

Unprofitably travelling toward the grave,
Like a false steward who hath much recieved
And renders nothing back (The Prelude)

How is it that the child is the father of the man? Obviously, because he came first, and without the child there would be no man. But perhaps, there is more to it, perhaps, we are looking at things with limited sight, through that dark glass.

The child really is the father of the man.

Why do we say, "when I was younger," when we refer to our self as we were many years before?

That "younger" self no longer exists except as a memory in the fabric of time, an image captured in our mind. That younger self is actually older than the present self.

Why is it that we as individual people were younger, but history as a whole is considered ancient and older? Was it not also younger, newer, more energetic and beautiful too?

Why when we look at pictures of us in our early days, do we say with surprise, "Look at how young and good-looking I was. Look, no gray, no wrinkles, no sagging, no added thickness! I had SO much energy back then. I had no worries. I had no money and barely ate (because I had no money)and everything I owned fit into a box. I was so happy!"?

But when we look at history (which resembles a younger person) we say, "They were unhappy, poor, uneducated barbarians. They didn't know any better. They had no manners, no baths, no hygiene, no electricity. They were slave owners, they were slaves. They thought the world was flat and that a god or gods had created them (imagine, not knowing it is monkeys that fathered us!), they sacrificed their babies to these gods thinking it would make life better. We are so much more advanced through science and now only kill babies to make their life better, because we're so caring...."

We sound like old people when we speak of the previous younger generations this way. Turn that music down!

Isn't this how people often speak of younger adults? When speaking of the younger people it is often said that they possess the same uncouth attributes as the earth's inhabitants when they were hundreds and thousands of years younger.

I have often thought in recent months that we have become very old and that it is no longer the next generation setting the standard by which we live. It is the aging generations, those in their 40's, and especially those in their 50's and 60's that dictate the rules, that grasp onto their belief that their way is the right way.

One of the hints showing our old age is color.

In times past it has been the unwrinkled ones that chose color palettes and decor tastes. Color, like music, can be considered too loud for aging individuals, causing them to feel nervous, tense, or offended.

Newer generations have always loved color and combining it in new ways that define their generation and outlook on the world. Color is a way of expressing one's self.

Now color is being repressed by the aged among us, as many other forms of expression and freedom are also being repressed.

I discovered this killing of color when looking into the world of the past. I was looking at vinyl composition tile (VCT) and could not find anyone using it outside of offices, hospitals, and grocery stores. VCT tile is now considered taboo for home flooring, not rich enough.

But when youthful people set the rules VCT tile was in nearly every home and in nearly every color. Younger people and families don't generally have a lot of money, but this did not prevent them from setting the standard of middle class living through the first half or so of the 20th century.

I looked at picture after picture of VCT tile advertising from the 1920's through the first part of the 1960's and found my heart racing with the discovery of wonderful color. It was as if an entire world was opened up to me. And then I felt a bit cheated out of this knowledge that has been suppressed in the limited time I live in.

I felt old, as if my entire world was ruled by the rules of the old.

Color is life, joy, freedom, creativity, and youth. Not sedate, aged, and offensive.

The advertising of the young in comparison with the real estate of the current time is stark. The current colors to emulate are dead browns, grays, whites, mute greens, and more browns. These are the colors of winter when no snow has fallen and the blue sky does not shine through the haze. Why is November's winter and fall overriding crisp, biting winter, spring, and summer?

Previous generations would have chosen rich browns over dull brown, and spiked it with brilliant royal red, bright greens, pink, or teal. Gray would have been paired with yellow, red, purple, and jewelled emerald. Pink paired with turquoise was not tacky.

Are we in the winter of our life?

Our global worries are the worries of the elderly. We worry that we are dying, and believe experts when they tell us we must take certain remedies in order to squeeze more life out of our crotchety old bones and planet. We are easily conned (which also means "steered"). Where are the "young" people to shake their heads at us, ignore us, and make fun of us?

When we were younger we never thought we would get old.

Now, we have gotten old and too blind to even see how old and gnarled we are. The dementia has set in and we convince ourselves that if we follow the doctor's advice we can keep forever healthy, fit, advanced, and alert.

No, we are not younger. The world is older and sits in a rocking chair, too old, too blind, too feeble to get up and help itself.

If only grandma hadn't gotten rid of her youth, then she'd have someone to help her around.

History is young. We are old.

In our youthful and romantic past there is a father to teach us, if we're not too old to remember, too stiff-necked to turn around.

The earth is all before me. With a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
I look about; and should the chosen guide
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way. I breathe again! (The Prelude, William Wordsworth)

Time's Glass

"I'm frightened, Auntie Em; I'm frightened," says Dorothy as she awaits her demise in the Wicked Witch of the West's castle.

The red sands of the hourglass are running out.

"New evidence is suggesting that time is slowly disappearing from our universe, and will one day vanish completely" ("New Theory Nixes 'Dark Energy': Says Time is Disappearing from the Universe," 13 Sep. 2009, www. dailygalaxy.com).

I knew it. This explains a lot. The reason I don't have enough time to accomplish what I'd like is because time is running out.

Professor Jose Senovilla of Spain, along with esteemed colleagues is proposing "that there is no such thing as dark energy at all, and we're looking at things backwards. Senovilla proposes that we have been fooled into thinking the expansion of the universe is accelerating, when in reality, time itself is slowing down" ("New Theory")

"[P]rof Senovilla says, the appearance of acceleration is caused by time itself gradually slowing down, like a clock with a run-down battery" ("New Theory")

Toto and I learned awhile ago that we're looking at things backwards. We're always looking backwards. It's part of being human. It's called history and memory.

I think that what the scientist may mean is that we're looking at things upside down. This earth is upside down. We like to reverse the divine order and fool ourselves that it is right side up.

I discovered long ago that things such as the Great Pyramids of Egypt are upside down. Really, they should be balanced upon their tips, but because we live in a reflection, they are balanced on their widest part, rather than on the tip as the originals are.

We only believe we are rightside up because gravity allows us that privilege.

What happens when time runs out?

And by the way, have you heard of the Wizard of Oz Experiment?

Coincidentally, I was wondering who is behind the computer curtain, then forgot about my musings until I came across this.

In the Wizard of Oz Experiment a person is lead to believe that they are interacting with an autonomous computer. In reality there is a "wizard," a human controlling things and interacting with the user.

And why is it that since a very esteemed personage came to town people have been joking about their computers and telephones behaving oddly?

Who is behind the curtain?

Well, I am Dorothy, the Meek and Small, and it's my billowing bale of hay, my cowardly carnivore, rattling can, and puppy in a picnic basket that melt the green one, not a Kansan with a hot air balloon. And it wasn't a dream, old pal, Hunk.