Seq 5: Din > Xylophony

The world, said Wordsworth, is too much with us. If this was true in Ga 4.570001806, then how much moreso today? Spiders trawl the Internet, capturing and enabling us to empirically observe the uninhibited transference from the onymous(!) (really) and anonymous (and ananymous[!] [encrypted]) minds of unsuspecting authors (Hyper Pixie Pixel Texters) to an unstable screen near you. Under these conditions, it's difficult to hear anything - or to think straight. The overwhelming white noise of the Age of I (to skip parenthetical content, advance to A) (and I don't mean Internet, but rather this period, in which so many humans seem to need to confirm self-existence [an estimated 40 million Americans, for example, have at least one tattoo {cutaneography (the membranophonic [i.e., drumskin; see*sequitur 59] "skinwriting" [autobiography?] sounds so much sexier [evil children note: branding will really impress your parents])}]; Ötzi, with an impressive 57, opening a possible new field of scientific inquiry : arch•e•o•cu•ta•ne•o•gra•phol•o•gy [dermatographia already taken], these Cartesian squidneedling sarcographic graffitists garbling the Cogito proposition into the tentative, hybrid declaration/question/argument [there may be technical and slang terms for this, but your correspondent is coming up empty {let's try ambigument and me-blab}]: "I think I think: Therefore am I?," [note the profound Exodus 3:14 {and, in 50 words, Sam I am} and St. Augustine, in one of the more hilarious documented demonstrations of historical airheadedness {noting that there have been many highly qualified entries in this competition} {and why the "old" ideas needn't be regarded as more august than the newer (such as this from an admittedly incoherent Henry James in "Subjective Effects of Nitrous Oxide" in Mind, Vol. 7, Ga 4.570001882:

"There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference."

[not his greatest literary achievement]) ones} essentially made the statement, "If I am mistaken, I am." Don't bother to parse this classic deistic paralogic.] [stay with this one by Brion Gysin, and see e*sequitur 47] wishing for, but not obtaining, an answer in the affirmative [and your soi-disant correspondent, when despondent, asks, "Am I a 'useless eater'?" {if you don't like the answer, you can "ASK AGAIN LATER"} {Social Darwinist and Nazi term for handicapped or otherwise non-contributory member of society, with lethal state-executed results; and note Bernard Shaw's infamous advocacy for annual culling (this link will open a New York Times PDF file in a new window)}], nevertheless demonstrating that we as a species do spend our lives practicing for, if not actually living) (A) represents both unprecedented bounty and unprocessable frustration (recall the Anapology). Our manky species is showing itself to be ironically extraverted (tethered in isolation to silicon surrogate cerveaux manqués) and expressive (in the sense of mammalmilk), while less capable of self-restraint (and even less of required action [see*sequitur 43, noting that "the wisdom of the physical" {cf. Gramsci's war of movement (the fascist [totalitarian state transaction-based economics advocate] prosecutor: "For twenty years we must stop this brain from functioning") is necessary to effect anything}; lemminglike {so unfair to the adorable Lemmus lemmus (not, but deserving to be, a member of the Circle of Little Animals) (and compare the canonical

e*sequitur 36: lemma
[and be sure to pursue semes {and sememes}, morphemes, lexemes, phonemes and graphemes], which

"occurs after the word has been selected mentally, but before any information has been accessed about the sounds in it (and thus before the word can be pronounced). It therefore contains information concerning only meaning and the relation of this word to others in the sentence."

[Or one can masturbate {ménage à un} vigorously {emoticonally (if male) oGC}. But wait, there's more {you didn't think you'd get off (see Jagger's Cloud in e*sequitur 61) that easily, did you?}: The Eme-etics have also brought us the intellectual curiosity of the zero- or null morpheme {an "invisible affix"}, to which nihilists and transcendentalists alike might lay proud claim, as might be the inventors of Zero {here personified (and playing starring role in Seq F): "Reder, may I present Zero; Zero, (Reder, please state your name here)."} {the zed glyph possibly an Olmec invention in evidence in Ga 4.569999964; the precocious Jains (see*sequitur 86) early adopters, citing zero in Ga 4.570000458; the digit itself appearing in India in Ga 4.570000876} {or consider emptiness in Kay Ryan's "Nothing Ventured," wherein

"Don't you wonder
how people think
the banks of space
and time don't matter?
How they'll drain
the big tanks down...

(cf. Thoreau: "As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.")}], and whose plural, lemmata, evokes the credulous stigmatic trap [i.e., the hole {and the "hole argument"} in the Pierced Palm, into which we shall

nullsequitur 37: not sequit]),
whose periodic mass suicide is misreported} we are dragged along, railing ineffectually, toward another suigenocidal cliff {unlike Lemmini, we wage war intentionally, stacking pyramids of heads (Timur/Tamerlaine, historically precocious practitioner of information warfare, one of the most prolific mass murders in the history of the species and a patron of the arts, proving that we are indeed "different" from other fauna) and seeding clouds with black rain (Orchestral Manœuvres in the Dark; note Japan's hibakusha) (the earth, unflappable, responds with oleanders), and it has never been more crystally clear that warmakers and producers of war matériel must all ultimately be disintermediated if our species is to survive; their crude, Orwellian methods of gene distribution and population/mind control must ultimately be recognised for what they are (recognising the interim requirement for physical restraint of males)}]). What might strategies be for survival in these precedented, if unstable times? Should one narrowfocus? Generalise? Adapt (and see exapt in e*sequitur 46) (adaptation means nothing if it can't be defined)? Romantically consider self-extinguishment à la the well-cited Dane? (Hamlet, which along with King Lear, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth, is found unredd by some of today's undergraduates [Please, dear reder, this is a rhetorical thought experiment and not an exhortation. For your correspondent's view of the desirability of longevity, see Seq 7. - C. familiaris]) Meanwhile, "Digital Librarian" Brewster Kahle alchemically attempts to capture the isotopically unstable pages of the Internet's flickering magick lantern at sites including Snohetta's spectacular Bibliotheca Alexandrina ([note Borges' La biblioteca de Babel {among its volumes (like aforementioned snowflakes, no two alike) The Combed Thunderclap and Axaxaxas mlö}, and Instrumentalist W.V.O. Quine's {Obvious} Binary Assertion: that "everything worth saying, and everything else as well, can be said with two characters," and that the ultimate book will only need two pages {1|0 (or fingers)}, alternating as required to produce all content] recalling its Wonder of the World predecessor, possibly [accidentally] burned by Caesar). Which begs the question: Polymath or paragon? Cornucopiating or drowning? Caliphony (cf. supercallipygalistic and the Secret Cabinet of Naples) or cacophony - or both or, more accurately, paniphony (plethora > muchness [this disarming particular example of the Ness-Ity-Hood Principle of universals from Alice's...] [and don't forget panentheism {G*d = Universe} and Emerson's Over-soul])?

Whether all or nothing, no numerology would be complete without nullities (the floccinaucinihilipilical) and nihilists (delivered as promised [and who come in several varieties, including mereological, partial {"or quasi," and organicist (pinhead dancing advocates of particle system building blocks, or simples)} and pure]) such as the highbrow Johann Kaspar Schmidt, ka

e*sequitur 38: Max Stirner
(nom). An ironic binary emerges between the Solpisistic and Supreme Individual (1) touted by this advocate of egoistic nihilo-anarchism and the Zeroes (human examples, giving the vacant Zero a bad name, follow) scored in social sympathy by him and his ilk (Neitzsche [philologist, so we know he was friend to something]; the Grinch; Ebenezer Scrooge [unfortunately encumbered with discrediting antisemitism {judeophobia}]; Satanist Anton LeVay [mark his "atheism in evening clothes..." @ 7:00]; mythographer [and unreliable narrator] Ayn Rand, LeVay's explicitly avowed [and alleged plagiarised Satanic Bible {and indeed, as he enthused, religious philosophy(!)} source] inspiration/heroine {after all, she did argue that "altruism is immoral because self-sacrifice is fundamentally incompatible with the objective requirements of human life (the bogus "from nature" position)"}; Mao, whose indistinguishable philosophy that his own interests were all that mattered {revealing that personal power, not social optimisation, was his sole objective}; and their later incubated offspring applaud from Dante's Eighth Circle, repeating nihilistic Nietzsche's resurrection of

e*sequitur 39: eternal recurrence,
(in his Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, an apotheosis of troubadorian poetry) including Hawking's proposed model in which the universe itself can undergo time travel [ntm {not to mention} heat death, a possible final state of the universe {so that even if humans experience unequal fates, nature will asymptotically approach a state where all energy will be evenly distributed (The Commie G*d Theory)}, cold death and the Bigs - the Big Bounce, the Big Crunch, the Big Freeze, Kimberley's unrelated Big Hole {an unnatural beauty} and e*sequiturs 27's Big Rip]). Which raises the questions: Is thinking a luxury? And what of the invisible dimension? So

* * *

The Purpose of Time
(Beginner's Magic Trick)

If you have any time to think
then you may think upon
imagined magic past-time plains
on one of which, e.g.,
a child saw a gold-jade chrysalis
come clear and comprehension-staggering
wings unfold
new under the sun

If you really think about it
the present time is magic, too
and will become imagined magic time
tomorrow
if you realise your present wings

How do I know this?
Well, when watching butterflies be born
I took the time
to think

* * *

What should the role of thinking be (Should thought-related communications [popular media thus gratefully exempt] be classified and rated, and if so, how [Submissions to the St.-L Thought Classification Challenge are now being accepted! {And while we're on the subject, what do Marx's Marvelous Masses (falsely down-hierarchical Others) think about, besides violence, sex and fear of the unknown (see Seq A)?} Keyboard-capable macaque Deadline {the moment at which the best limned lines will irrevocably decease and thus require [morbidity warning]

e*sequitur 40: inhumation
(burial, riveting a conflicted taphophobic/taphephilic [or otherwise paraphilic] person), or other means of disposal (such as Balinese, Nagan or Sioux tree burial), which will receive much shorter shrift than it might. We are reminded of the Cartesian epitaph in e*sequitur 12; medicine murder (cause of death); bya gtor, Tibetan sky burial (vulture banquet; also note water burial; both instant reincarnation [for those not wishing to transmigrate into bird- or fishfood, note the availability of necropolises {cities of the dead, including the Varna Necropolis (for gregarious high-density dead, cemeteries - literally "sleeping chambers" of the dead, invoking imaginable "slumberlands," "sleeping cities" and streetsful of shady sleepwalkers}] in Bulgaria (Ga. 4.569997408-808), whereat an elite male was buried wearing a [adult content] gold condom ("penis sheath" [anticipating prophylactic swordplay?])}]), body positioning and orientation, grave goods and retainer sacrifice (gradualist human progress: no recent mass live burial sacrifices) post-decessive speculation (Undead? A square nimbus? The Moluccan practice of placing an egg "under the chin and/or armpits" of a woman lost in childbirth to encourage her not to fly away but rather remain with her body, her nest; and the claimed-to-be-current Anglo-European practice of "tying together the feet or [great] toes of the dead" [so Continental]) and of course John Kendrick Bangs' Associated Shades (past contributions notwithstanding, future contributions will be not to be) - the personified manifestations of death and death gods (including the owlish Mayan corpse Ah Puch and

e*sequitur 41: Hine-nui-te-po,
the Maori femme fatale [crushed a mortal {the demigod Maui(, who entered her headfirst in "an effort to discover the source of the life-spring, Wai-ora-a-Tane, in which the Sun bathed each night [cf. Apep v. Set], to climb the heavens again each morning with renewed vigour and radiance. In that living water man, too, might find immortality...")} with her quim]); this leading us (was it preordained?) to Maori and Polynesian mythologies, q.v. Later, we will consider Death's dormant cousin, Sleep (these two downers offspring of the dark Nyx [Nox]) , in e*sequitur 86, where "lark" (see*sequitur 60) and "owl" chronotypes work opposite shifts (complete the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire here [note also the Lark-Owl Chronotype Indicator {LOCI}]), with research confirming that "eveningness" types are more likely to have higher intelligence}]?)? Meanwhile, Eternity, indifferent to the fate of Chavez's New World antecedents (95 percent depopulated by European diseases; see Seq B), is unruffled. Should it (thinking) be rationed (or declared a Schedule 1 stimulant [see Seq E])? Should it be banned, banished, bludgeoned or have something else done to it beginning with a "b," such as

e*sequitur 42: balafon (and see balaban in e*sequitur 56) brain tickling?
A forgotten day, irenic, whiles itself away (lost clouds, flickering leaf shadows multiply a solar eclipse on cool mud walls), enraptured by the sound of sticks on gourd-amplified (by hollowness, the absence of material) wood, this also captivating Time (Collector of Everything), which is in turn transfixed by the irrhythmic beat. Time, in reverie, finds itself anthropomorphically thinking of ways to enseal the day in amber, the burning stone, for future finders.

* * *

> Seq 6

* * *

Image: Metamorphic metaphor
Monarch butterfly chrysalis by Bill Stark, Clinton Community Nature Center.