mfc0x00000009-the-cathedral-of-saint-anthony-proto

Between every thing there is a structure erectedby a rich ecosystem of impossible, improbableand otherwise impractical thingsCrawling alive inside letter formstoo black within the ink to be measuredor knownThey defy grids andComplicate FormWaltzing together invisiblyin the shadows of every formatan architecture of the LossyThis disconfiguration is an ecology of the "outlier",an ecology of the "glitch"an ecology of the anomalous,every mysterious thing, which, when inspected more closely,dissolves into a decoherent foam.The perfect Protophor.Already barely acknowledged,these totems of impossibility are banishedThey are deemed "mistakes""accidents""poor formulation""withering speculation"because we'd like to live in a world of straight linesand soft curves.We've learned to love maps.We'd like to forget the infinitude standing void between our pillarsand how scary that distance isHow it abandons Achilles to the SisypheanHalving and Halving and Halving and Halvinginfinitely infinitely smaller than that.Think of the simplest thingThere is something simpler, I'm certainMundane and UnderstandableA fierce virus of comprehensionAnd as the pattern emerges in a burst of beauty and understandingIt sizzles awayStanding monolithin a museum of a million patternsechoed only in their own regression.It's like Hofstadter said"... an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order."Computers can only chatter in patternThey can 'process' chaosBut nothing comes backLike speaking to a black holeWe share a common language with our computersTime would imply our language created the otherand is, therefore, safely sequestered from the child's influenceAs they say "God spoke"and creation reactedBut it did not speak backAt least not in an equivalent tongueBut our creation is rather oroborous with usOur thoughts must be shaped into computer patternsif we are to communicate with computersAnd, increasingly, with each otherAnd this refolds our brains, sanitizing our thoughts through habitAnd slowly, we forget that formulas aren't the only means of measurementOf understandingOf KnowingFormulas and functions are for raw materialsInput into outputOnly the "dust to dust"But we are not raw materialsOur thoughts are not raw materialsThey don't have to be.They can be laid over a gridCartesian ExistentialismEuclid serving little better.But there is so much inside of us that does not need to be mapped to exist.To exist.And, here, we have arrived at the center.We all exist and we are all aware that we, someday, will not.But, our terror is more complex than mortality.I don't think we fear ceasing to exist nearly as much as we fearthat we perhaps do not exist, as we are, right now.And so we justify. We earn, befriend, improve, impress, invest, cut back, transform, transcend, transfixAll to know that we exist.But we exist. It's not clear how or why, but, it seems clear that we do. That we are.For, if we were not, we wouldn't have the experience of such ontological terror.We would not have the aspirations that keep us up at night.We simply "Would not"As far as I've found, there is no way to not exist if you are still drawing in perception.Even if you were to loose the stories and the habits, let language dissolve into the vibrant light and dance show that it is.Even if only for a moment.For a moment, forget the grid. Inside you is an Anthonian Architecture It has no straight lines.It defies vector and dimension. Inside you is an impossible geometry of impractical bacteria.Irrespective of shape, time or consequence.Millions of organismsNot of geneticsNot of memeticsUntransferable A culmination of the bits we lost in compression"Signifying Nothing"There is a screaming tempest,silent only because it lacks the formalismIt is direct opposition of the formalismAnd yet everything we experience, in some sense,everything that existsis filtered through the foamPattern Players experienced through the realm of the abstractAnd when we forgetthat there is body in the LossyThat we have an InteriorityWe become mystified by a reality built up only of the realQuantification becomes ontological qualificationCommunication diminishes from an act of transferAnd becomes our only way to know we areAs if existence is justified by committeeTo exist is to beSEENHEARDTOUCHEDTASTEDandSMELLEDIt's no longer enough to beTo Be.Philip K. Dick says "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away"But that doesn't mean it can't be lost.