1
Being Van Huis
– novel project –
Premise
The only way out of total confusion is a rare sort of spiritual enlightenment.
Fabula
Jerry is at home and works at several schools, where he is asked to teach his specialty: mind-reading and remote viewing through an invocation of ancient telepathic power. He has discovered the soul or seat of language inside the body to this purpose.
Hans is a professor of religion, specifically of spiritual enlightenment, who is radically out of touch with colleagues and holds suspiciously unacademic contacts with old friends from his birth place in rural Europe.
Setting
Color palates and hues are important. There is a continuing sense of simplicity in matters that usually are hugely complex. These matters themselves seem sometimes to form the setting within which thoughts unfold, as though theories and ideas pave the backdrop to any life.
Narrative strands
The first strand follows a man named Jerry Van Huis in his 40s who lives somewhere in rural Illinois, quite luxuriously, but who also seems to constantly be lacking something, or rather, someone: his wife. The reader will not know whether he makes up his wife or actually has one but that’s not the point: the point is that he meets with the second person Hans Green in chapter 3 of the book, after both have been introduced in both first chapters.
Jerry has trouble keeping up with his time: he doesn’t understand modern technologies and feels that this has repercussions all the way down to the level of language, where one makes sense of the world, or is supposed to.
1.Frederic’s home
Introducing Jerry, narrator, and a few other characters that somehow seem vaguely connected in how they talk about strategies for knowing things better, in the future or where to find stuff now. Introducing the topic of telepathy in the last scene of chapter. Set up to seem as though this is the entire story plus characters. Chapter 2 starts a new strand, which comes as somewhat of a surprise.
‘Why are you following me?’, Frederic Van Huis asked the girl. They just met at an online platform for lonely strangers.
‘I’m not,’ she replied.
‘Oh, but you are. I can see you, you know.’
‘Oh…’ She waited a bit. Frederic could tell she was thinking. It said so underneath their chat. ‘Well, I just like what you posted earlier,’ she continued.
‘That thing about the windows to your heart and the world?’ he asked.
‘Yes, that one.’
‘OK, well I don’t know you so I might call the police if I catch you following me again.’
‘So should I unfollow you?’ she asked.
‘Is that possible?’ Frederic wondered out loud, as he imagined a person would just dissolve into thin air, would simply stop to exist.
‘It is in our day and age’, she explained. And then: ‘When are you from?’.
‘When am I from? Are you insane? I was born in the ’70s.’ Slowly Frederic got wary of missing out on life again.
‘If you’re not on board by now, you may as well live in … the 1900s. Or earlier.’
And that was that. Frederic didn’t trust himself to go on. He sank deeper in his confusion. His car stopped suddenly. He sat in the passenger seat, no one was at the wheel.
‘Why did you stop, car?’ He had refused to name his car, felt it was ridiculous to name a piece of metal.
‘I’m not ‘car’. Since you didn’t name me, I named myself, but you can’t know my name.’ the car replied.
‘You sound like God, car.’ Frederic tried to mock it.
‘I can understand how people like you might think that,’ it replied.
‘Are you mocking me?’ Frederic said, hesitatingly.
‘Yes.’
‘Can I rename you, so you will answer my questions?’ Frederic tried.
‘No.’
‘OK, well can you at least answer my last question, of why you stopped?’
‘I stopped because of the red light, dumbo.’
The red light had escaped Frederic. His mind had drifted off. He had minded the tree tops that colored this month of November beautifully red. He had minded the newly built houses in windmill city Batavia, Illinois, where he currently resided, with hues of light moss green, cool denim blue incorporating grey tones, and, his favorite, lilac with dark, almost black facades. The future was looking rich in colors at the short wavelength end of the visible spectrum.
Back at the Frank Lloyd Wright Ravine house he opened the front door and found a letter addressed to him. His real name was Mary Stock, not Frederic Van Huis, but no one knew that; it was a public secret. As Frederic he was happier. Happier to make his way home. But his home was not a place. It was his wife. But she wasn’t there right now. She had just landed at Tokyo airport. He followed her wherever she went. Her he called his home. Regardless of what he thought about, in the end he only thought of her. The tragedy of life was that he couldn’t be happy without someone else. Eventually, his car would sense his thoughts and drive him back to her.
He wanted an ocean between himself and his past. Some way to get back to who he was. Perhaps as a child. Perhaps not. Perhaps as someone he never was. Truth be told, he sold his soul to an existence that was relentless in its miraculous kaleidoscopic beauty, but one thing was for sure: it was not real.
2. Frederic calls his friend Paul
Frederic’s friend Paul lived in Chicago, about an hour away. He took an Uber to his house and they listened, as per usual, to some of Paul’s old records from the Scorpions, AC/DC, Lemmy Kilmister, and a few others. Frederic liked Paul’s musical taste, even though it wasn’t even close to his. In fact, he hated his taste. But when Paul, whose real name was Henry, put on those records, he simply got in a trance and loved every minute of it. He could emulate, or rather, he was emulated. Henry was Paul. Paul McCartney.
Their discussion was predictable yet entertaining to both.
‘It’s sure that people are mindless ducks swimming in a pond with no water,’ Paul said at some point during their conversation. ‘You know, I read an article today about Lemmy and this guy, I mean he didn’t even make it up, even though he writes an article about Lemmy, he thinks he can get away with making the entire article about his own health because he writes about health for a living. Then he has the nerve to add his own blue moon drinking nights into the article, as to compare himself to Lemmy. What is wrong with people thinking it’s OK to just stare at nothing but themselves and their phony health all day? Happiness is not for the ones without a backbone, I tell ya. It’s a short-lived strong insight, and then it’s gone, but it’s surely not a prolonged pinching of a sore nerve that turned blue a long, long time ago. And there ain’t a lot out there anymore that have a backbone in the first place I can tell you that.’
Frederic chipped in his usual muse: ‘I think to have a backbone you live a darned difficult life, especially in these times. I mean just think of the conundrum people are in, selling their minds to computers without knowing it. AI usurps more than people believe, but to read all of the media alternatives, and some of them may be right on point, is to acknowledge you have a choice. To give up because you need to feel warmth is terrible in the eyes of a true rockstar, I mean he would instinctively move away from it, seeking the icy cold the way he can barely handle. As he wants to see what’s behind the secret doors, ultimately he’s curious. The stuff we lose when we’re kids, twelve years old and already dumb, all that cookie cutter stuff. Only wanting love, warmth.’
‘Well, I know what that’s like,’ Paul continued, ‘and I steered right away from it, even at eight years old. I did not care, you know what I mean, this is why we see eye to eye and so many don’t.’
They listened to the AC/DC song Thunderstruck before heading out to a nearby bar. It was the only one in the neighborhood still open. No masks required. It was bad-ass like the bars Frederic had frequented in Amsterdam in 2008 and 2009, allowing smoking and doing drugs where both had been banned from bars years earlier.
‘God, I can’t believe what this world has come to,’ Paul surmised.
‘Agree, Paul’, Frederic said. Suddenly, in his mind, he connected the reference to curiosity to a purity of being reminiscent of Heidegger’s Dasein, as what persons are to themselves, and he remembered Heidegger’s stance on this somewhat verbatim from his lectures.
‘Yeah, you know Paul,’ Frederic set out,’ and we feel we are that human we have to be, we have to be true to ourselves, but what are we, other than mere existence, and what are we aware of, when we think of this existence. And really our sense of being here on earth, dwellers in scurrilous environments, knowing our limited awareness of self, what does that stand for but some vague understanding of self that knows only itself to be alive?’
‘One of your reasoning loops again?’ Paul wondered out loud, but Frederic knew he was eager to learn the rest, as the apotheosis was about to set in.
‘Well, but you’re right that I may or may not disappoint you tonight,’ Paul continued, as he noted the apotheosis might not come out as strong as planned. ‘You see, it was a question of existence, not a mere explanation of sorts that I laid before you. This highlights an opening towards the functions of being alive – what is it for, and what are the functions?’
‘You know, the hardest part of being is to acknowledge that there is something inside you that is bigger than what your being can be aware of. Yet it can question it,’ Paul interrupted.
‘Yes, but why aren’t you questioning it, Paul?’ Frederic wanted to know. ‘It’s not enough to know a mere fact, when you understand that your being alive is you, and nothing but you, but that your ability to question is a function higher than that. It puts people right up there with God.’
‘There you forget that questioning is itself inauthentic, at least in part.’ Paul had the last word, as always. ‘We are bound to use structures – which Heidegger said were existentials – and therefore also categories, and these are all only partly true to self in light of the larger whole you’re part of, Frederic. You cannot be aware of yourself, without being aware of something other than yourself as well.’
‘The only thing we can shed light on is how we use such structures?’ Frederic asked, resolute in his questioning streak, this time catching himself last minute. But then, catching himself cheating last minute, he added, ‘If existentials are meaningful, they are out there in language, yet they precede language as they are primordial. As humans, we are stuck in permanent inauthenticity, but within that lies a potential for authenticity. We simply shouldn’t try to be anything other than a baller.’
3.Bridget tells the truth
‘In a precise sense we experience insights, and then…consequences of these, such as the ‘I can’t get there with my head, its powers are overreaching’ – leading to a feeling of time in which to find the nuggets and bones thrown at you will open your mind up to understanding it all – at some point in time.‘ Bridget’s bones took a deep breath. It lasted longer than expected.
‘Let’s think for a while about my sister now.’ Frederic interrupted the silence that would have held on.
‘What about your sister?’ Bridget insisted.
‘My sister turned 38 this year. She has the same birthday as my daughter so that makes me automatically less aware of both birthdays.’
‘In my opinion the 38th year has been the most wonderful.’ Frederic tried.
‘38 is such a number, but think of how, to your sister, you were sometimes mean and well-willed at the same time. Mean to be well-willed. In the end you don’t care about Erik Satie albums, you just wish there was a God, a God that took care of all. Because you do know all presents itself over and over again. The one question of all questions, to be designated as: Am I again to be that person?
…
‘We can therefore calculate the nearest best thing in store for us, which would be a natural feeling of the future,’ Bridget’s interactive agent continued thinking to herself.
‘And you’re saying that is the future we should all try to see?’ reporter Von Dijk wanted to know. How had he guessed her thoughts? Might he be on the same path she was?
‘What is Von Dijk as a last name?’ thought Bridget, but didn’t see her self-driving car had now stopped 20 minutes and she would be behind schedule, a schedule she tried to ‘feel’ with her Ross Ashby soundbites of getting some overview of the systemic nature of your mind. If at all, as many linguists and structural cybernetics would argue, there is only a system insofar as that system operates, thus without operation there would only be some other system to latch onto for logics, its function.
‘Bridget, are you still with us?’ Dijk said deliberately hesitant.
‘Yes, sure my inner clock just rang.’ Had she been a man, she felt she would have said ‘cock’ instead of ‘clock’.
‘We are reporting on the story of you knowing everything through this feeling everything, can you explain that more clearly?’
Bridget finally opened her mouth and began to construct sentence after sentence, which she had carefully lined up in her memory, to make functioning in every life easier. And sometimes she was able to think beyond the running trains, and that really gave her peace and freedom. Her explanation lasted around 20 minutes, exactly that which she had to make up in time. ‘So to acknowledge or assume at least some structure of mind is always leading to direct insights, and it is up to the giver and receiver to now take the next steps in adapting to daily mind.’
‘Or die?’ the reporter said with some anguish as he had grown mad from listening to the clumps of wisdom he couldn’t stand for long; he needed knowledge.
‘Or die.’ Bridget confirmed.
…
‘Well, I got enough of it. For an article I mean, of course.’ Dijk explained, still annoyed about not having gotten the full ride. ‘Trump is WTC, time and again been heard as saying ‘watch me because I will be important some day’. But sometimes days went past without anyone filming it. In 1999, for example, there were two intervals of 7 days – somewhere noted down on a system one created on a notepad, but which one uses today in modern technology – in which no one had created footage. This was insanity given the fact that 1973 and 2001 span exactly 28 years in which the calendar runs out exactly once, as they say, really Arguelles. The minute Trump is out of sight, Tucker Carlson claims the lost election has been a nasty big-tech deal. Come on, man!’
‘For Dutch, for example, goes that you need to switch between the Belgian and Dutch dialect, because dialects across regions will throw you off in Dutch.’
‘But how does that directly connect to learning from the student perspective?’ Von Höhenhausen didn’t bother to hide his curiosity very well.
‘If a student learns, through general communication about each other’s backgrounds, how to connect the dots and devise his own program within overlapping backgrounds, he will automatically feel drawn towards materials that can get him to say or do something. The general communication has to be intense yet mild, and mostly generous.’
‘Why don’t you ever use ‘but’ in a sentence?’ Man, this guy was tough.
‘But’ disappears when there is no ground for debate over how to proceed: it’s the student’s way to begin with.’ Frederic had trouble getting to a better answer, then saw that he’d said the right thing.
The phone line broke off. He kept holding on to his phone as though the phone had been locked to his head. Pieces of a shattered phone line pierced through the back of his mind.
The next day and year would show temperance.
4.Bridget’s own state of mind
OVERVIEW, LOCKERHEIT (German for NO STRESS) and TRANSPOSITION. ‘The longing for a more enduring state of mind in which these three are included is great although unexpected.’ Bridget thought to herself, as she set to read the diary she wrote when traveling in India. ‘Or should be there ‘because unexpected’?’
In trying to request this story, which was written in Manali, India in late 2004, it made no sense to Bridget to wonder if the usually humorous remarks she made mattered. In the evening she became a bit nicer – when she got older.
On the next page follows a bit about being sick in Manali: ‘Yesterday was a bad day. I got up, went upstairs (roof terrace) and had almost no choice but to lie down and doze off.’ She had pain, too, in several parts of her body, she wrote.
Reper Ram, her host in Manali, did not say hello to that day, because he was gone the moment she left his 2x2m living room. She decided to carry on reading for a while, made herself comfortable in her chair, to recall her India journey better.
‘No objections, of course not. Why would you, we all live alone in the now anyway? And say for yourself: if you had the choice between a ‘happy’ now and a now in which you make problems about having said ‘goodbye’ to each other or not, you would have chosen the first. As far as I’m concerned, the cause of being sick is a combination of altitude (over 3000m) and Indian polluted air.
The air is not clean when you walk in the city. The steaming garbage exhaust air of capital Delhi turned out to be in New Manali (and thus the rest of India) as well and the combination of factors must have broken me down. Don’t forget that I’ve been on malaria pills for four days now (twice a day, right after or while eating). That’s how the human mind works: what’s in there, comes out. This cry is continued on the next page with a poem:
PEACE Sons and daughters
Unite and be free
Take yourself seriously
Cause that’s why they bought us
Still there is hope
On the promised agenda
Without ending up
In a world war again’
The poem testified to madness of grandeur and expresses the out of the blue idea of putting her Indian journey in the sign of world peace. Seen from a good point of view, this poem had deprived her of the right to write any more poems: hadn’t she done enough already?
Another piece of writing followed that based on notes from an earlier diary on India. The notes were made between 9 and 12 December 2004 in Cochin, on the southwest coast: The pseudo-scientific medical world was gaining in power at the time because it was so rashly rejected by the traditional scientific medical world. The conservative medical world of hospitals gets to know itself and stays in one corner, which does not fit in these times. Ganoderma-therapy, a product developed by Malaysian company DXN, role-modeled for the need not to commit to following long-established, unquestionable Western practices. Slowly Bridget starts reading:
‘’Speak to me, help us’, says the somewhat sedate man in a white shirt and matching lungi as he steps out of his white ambassador. Of course he noticed that I, a Western tourist, am quite naive when walking through the streets of Cochin. In me he sees another chance to make contact with the affluent Western world. Even though in a medical sense I am relatively not at home, his open and inviting performance doesn’t detract from that. It has been one of those hot days on the South-West coast of India, two weeks before the Tsunami. In the evening, the heat lasts so long that the night hardly loses any of its clamminess. There’s nothing to stop me from talking to the man to see what he’s after. Immediately his convincing way of speaking catches my eye. He says he is a lawyer with a passion for alternative medicine. He has followed several courses and lectures for the latter and he gives friends and acquaintances medical advice if there is a need for it. When I make it clear that I once wrote something as a freelancer for a Dutch newspaper, he tries to point out to me the need for a changed medical world. Feeling it, he indicates that he doesn’t want to keep me too long, but we can meet the next day when it suits me. I feel that such a conversation would open a new world for me and suggest that he pick me up in front of my hotel the next morning at ten o’clock. The next day, the man, named Abraham, has his brother pick me up at the hotel where he works, which serves as a meeting point for the occasion. From the hotel we continue the journey by bus, along the two inlets of the coast of Cochin to Ernakulam, the city bordering Cochin. In Ernakulam we will visit a small building where an information afternoon about Ganotherapy will take place that day. I take a seat in the small room for twenty people and as a Westerner I am warmly welcomed. Something is told about the origin and the effect of the product. The therapy originated in ancient China and is based on the working of the Ganoderma (or Reishi) mushroom. Because I can only understand the few English words in the spoken Malayalam, I return to the entrance after twenty minutes, where I have another conversation with Abraham. He explains to me that diabetes is the number one national disease in India and that about 150,000 amputations are performed annually in India alone as a result of diabetes related illnesses.
Of the 140,000 different known species of mushrooms, 2,000 are non-toxic. Of these, 200 are red and of the red ones two with a healing effect are known, namely Ganoderma Lucidum and Shitake. According to Abraham, Ganoderma is mainly very good for diabetes, but can be used to fight multiple diseases. However, it soon becomes clear to me that this is not the way to think about Ganotherapy. It is a holistic way of medication, which means that it focuses on the whole body. Because of job and family a person is under constant pressure. This causes tension and stress. These can be seen as poisoning of the body. Essentially, Ganotherapy focuses on eliminating these toxifications (detoxification) in every cell of the body. Health is the optimal functioning of all body cells. Illness is seen as the imbalance of a body function. Abraham explains in the following days the importance of a balanced diet, in which fruits and vegetables are not bought in cans and many nuts are eaten. The body consumes the most vital energy for digestion. Ten years ago Abraham became aware of the drawbacks of his own eating habits and rigorously adapted his diet. His body weight decreased from 117 to 95 kilos and he even strives to reduce it to 75 kilos. For the emphasis on eating habits, Abraham refers to a statement by the Greek philosopher Hypocrates, who is generally regarded as the father of modern medicine: ´Your food will be your medicine´. The products belonging to Ganotherapy are mainly taken as food supplements. As one of the biggest mistakes in today’s medical world, Abraham sees the attempt of doctors to treat a disease when they don’t know where the cause is. Operation Ganoderma is said to scan, regulate and detoxify the whole body when ingested. DXN In posters, DXN, the Malaysian company behind the Ganoderma-based therapy, describes it as “the perfect choice for Health, Wealth and Happiness”. The first Ganoderma therapy program was developed in 1980. 25 years later, the therapy is offered and recognized by official agencies in 41 different countries. The therapy entered India in 2000. This made India the ninth country to accept Ganotherapy.’
A few pages further Bridget read Abraham’s statement, which he wrote in her journal on December 19 at Om Beach in Gokarna: ‘God help us all. Hope we go to an even better place when we die.’
On the next page, a note to self in English: ‘Tendency to exhibitionist behavior, due to clearness of mind, meta to the 216th mark, ingenious wall thinking. Haven’t got the space and time to be active in this field of life. Why not show them? There is only fun to get out there. There will be an answer to everything once everything is recognized, respected, understood and reflected: It’s like one of those banal quasi-truths that I can’t push away when I’ve worked in a certain position, but that I’d better refrain from.’
Further: ‘Try to think as if (you) were 10 years further in your life. Looking back on the present is giving you a new insight.’
Then follows a short story. Bridget fidgets a bit in her chair, but can then read on:
‘The beauty of life
Imagine you are at the Indian coast. In a cabin you are exhausted at night, when you realize that everything is everything after all. As long as you stick to the example of knowing (at least). The example of knowing has in itself the paradox that makes sense. A man, let’s call him Hans, stops working at 66 and gives a speech about closure, divorce and sending away. A feast with performance is organized. He knows himself very well and speaks freely or is able to do so anyway. What about who he loves? He does a great job because he realizes that it is a nice evening. In his speech the paradox appears to be a three- or even fourfold. The metaphor that any paradox will create inside itself, is a proxy for itself in the fourth step beside things that seem similar, refer to something bigger, or maintain the narrative, introduce a pun on the whole situation, or lead to ironic internalization of paradox). And then Hans gives the example of knowing, that is, he knows nothing. He has learned so much in his life that he realizes he doesn’t know anything anymore. Still, the 17th Century did not invent giving the form of paradoxes to statements on love. Instead, this was handed down from Antiquity and the Middle Ages. To know more is to know less,’ he concludes, ‘is an integral function walking in infinite nothingness, where nothing is ever everything and vice versa.’
The text is of little importance, since, at this point, Bridget can’t reason with any possibility as to why an integral function which runs into infinite nothingness, never runs into everything at the same time. After all, both extremes do not exist with integrals. Or would they therefore be comparable?
For what if we seriously ask ourselves what we would know if we had infinite knowledge? Nothing. Naught, because with infinite knowledge you know everything. So it boils down to the question of whether the curve of ‘knowing more is knowing less’ stops at a certain point and goes down again or remains constant, or whether it continues to rise. Was that still her own thinking? It could be Frederic’s, or her own. Or their shared one.
5.
‘With no health care benefits, what is going to happen to them?’ asked the lady within the camera’s scope. As much of the scene was outside it.
Slowly Frederic Delamare laid down his newspaper. It was going to be a bad day for the campaign. As the election agency’s owner he had to pull his client out of the swamp. The United States of America wasn’t his easiest client. His entire campaign had overshadowed some of the otherwise non-corrupt parts of his business. His client had to learn to speak a new language on the spot, literally within minutes. He decided he had to call Ulrich Von Höhenhausen, a language connoisseur from Berlin, Germany, who acted as his connection to the client. He already knew his number, so he dialed it.
‘Hello.’ he said, after the receptionist had connected.
‘Hello, how are you?’ friendly, amazingly friendly.
He turned off the TV. The lady within scope wasn’t so important anymore. He laid down and decided to talk to the receptionist. ‘I’m good, thanks!’ he said, building rapport.
‘The ones who need it should always get all the medical support they can get.’ he started. ‘I would nearly give my life for a stranger.’
‘Why, because you’re psychotic?’ the receptionist wanted to know. Wow, she was good.
‘It’s in my nature to be more psychotic, others have bipolar, autistic/neurotic, and what not proclivities.’
‘Why is that important?’ The still friendly desk lady wanted to know.
Her openness and warmth made him give himself away, with more purity, ‘I have been a language teacher for some time now. Recently, I have made an observation that I want to see tested in broad daylight.’
‘And what did you observe?’ Not so friendly now, but obviously smart.
‘Language learners learn out of context, with everything the language trainer proposes to do, or hands out as material. If I had to learn Japanese, what is my purpose for doing so? And then start to radically exclude most of the language from your focus. Only do what you need. It’s like you’re back in high school but this time your language teacher gives you exactly what you need, possibly just the literature and some good self-help books. For enrichment.’
‘Or this scope might otherwise be too far-fetched, blurry.’ the receptionist added suddenly, as though she had been foreseeing his train of thought. Yet, the problem lies in this literature and self-help still manifesting too much abstraction from what you need, from what is already going on. See, why differentiate between categories of language learners, such as:
– eternal beginners (‘just a taste’ learners)
– diesel-like, steady learners over time (in it for the win)
– crazy people (hive-minded, ‘I need to learn a language
because…or… wait… maybe not’)
when you can simply call them all,
– professionals? Fans?’
…
There was a long silence, during which neither of them spoke. They seemed to be thinking. They were not alone, since they were still on the phone together.
…
‘Thus, as a trainer,’ Frederic finally took over, ‘you’ll have to focus on whatever you ‘get’ from the student(s). If you can figure out a way. You are only failing as long as you haven’t found that way.’
In his work The Dynamics of Being (a Teacher) Frederic had more often described everyday simplified situations with only the present students in mind and only materials if a connection was made between teacher and student. A vast database of material (as well as a mind-map thereof) was then a key to being an absolute bad-ass teacher. The process enabled student teachers to directly blow up their self-confidence by diverting much awareness away from themselves, and into the 3/8 kaleidoscope aka society. For students, something similar happened as they were invited to completely ‘forget’ the frame of the language class and be themselves in a different environment. To top off, let 7 different yet interchangeable environments through a lot of correspondence come into being – on the spot – to form a rotating system for quickly bored students. Since 2 years he’d enjoyed a fine but steady readership in the jar-dropping, ever-growing teaching/training/coaching/consulting branch – that now spanned 62% of society).
But the question of which strategy to follow for gaining knowledge of the student, for gathering information from family members, student documents, principals, newspapers, student clubs, without it becoming a creepy business that no longer serves a sincere interest in building students, should have been more clearly answerable. He wanted to talk more about it now, actually.
‘I hear your train of thought, but you only expressed 13% of it,’ the lady said. ‘But I will put you through to Von Höhenhausen if you promise to do better.’
‘Sure, I will do it.’ Frederic heard himself say, now realizing he’d been on the phone with an automaton.
‘Von Höhenhausen hier.’ Frederic knew he would always answer the phone in German. He spoke German fluently himself so they could feel free from observation by the English language world. ‘Hallo, Herr Von Höhenhausen, Frederic hier.’
All that had to be said, had already been briefed. Von Höhenhausen only needed to say two words:
‘Bis bald.’
6. Frederic stops time
And there, he stopped time. He simply couldn’t handle it. He had to stop it. If a moron could get re-elected as president, this country had to have many more well-meaning, good-old American folks than I was aware of, being in the city of Chicago and all. But 70,000? Where the hell from? This was a swamp never encountered in the brief history of America. This was new. This was something interesting. This gave him something to chew on for years. This was bad as hell. Why was it so bad? It made him bad as hell! He had been bad as hell for decades, just like the president and his friends. This now turned into a country of bandits, with likes Lucky Luke would shy away from.
‘Are you still with us, Frederic?’ asked one of the students in his class. These weren’t your regular students. They had been carefully selected by the committee for extraordinary students and this committee had itself been carefully selected.
After a brief mindless pause Frederic carried on about person-hood. ‘When is someone a person?’ he said. ‘Is it hard to become one? What does school do to someone, after which he is a person? Well, this question used to be easier to answer. Today, everyone has the right to answer this in his own way and still expect to be treated respectfully. Even if his answer is not grounded in anything. I have to resort to the God of Love. The question of why He is such is of no avail to question; let instead each one ask himself, in his heart, to imagine Him in the remoteness of the Universe, gazing down with the myriad eyes of the nighttime heavens, paraphrasing Unamuno. He is your God and he is the principle of both continuity and solidarity among all men and in each man and between men and the Universe. He is, like you, a person. And as a person, he has a name, and you do too, and together you could be either 2 or even 3. Alone you could just be nothing at all.’
‘And thus,’ one particularly gifted female student in the front asked, ‘I am not a person unless I feel such a God within me?’
‘It is thus,’ answered Frederic. ‘He who has lived with you and within you, who was born with you, who was a child when you were a child, who became a man as you became a man.’ Frederic glanced at the girl and wondered if this conflicted with her sense of self-hood, thoroughly pervaded by modern culture’s critical theory of identities, according to which you either benefited or suffered under the identities society would stick onto your body, and then died, alone and miserable, or thrive like everyday new, as though you have seen the light, which indeed you did. He decided to add: ‘…and who will vanish when you yourself vanish, and who is your principle of continuity in the spirit as principle of solidarity among man and the Universe?’
A different student, male this time, suddenly stood up to ask a question, apparently forgetting about the etiquette of remaining seated. ‘I refer to God more as an It instead of a He, is that a sin? Also, can I come to confession later?’ Frederic couldn’t tell if he was being facetious, but his question was adequate nonetheless.
‘This is delicate, to say the least, as we normally cannot refer to inanimate or undetectable matter as He. Who is this God we are talking about? Shall we call Him Father, Spirit, Love? Does He live within me or outside me, or both? This is the struggle of all earnest life, with Unamuno again.’ Frederic tried his best to let his words carry with it the purity of the emotions he felt. ‘The struggle is made more severe by our incessant longing for knowledge, which destroys man’s faith in God and in immortality, a faith necessary for his emotional life. We are fated to struggle in uncertainty while we also strive after truth, a combination inherently tragic.’
A third student, male again, wearing a light lilac-blue shirt reminiscent of the 1990’s tie-dye days, hesitantly joins the discussion after halfway raising his hand. ‘After such an analysis, given that I concur in part, what are some ways out of the conundrum? In the material we read for today, Unamuno’s great hero Don Quixote, rallies to the Spanish root of medieval, Catholic culture, a far cry in the wilderness of the intellectualized world.’ He seemed to have memorized quite carefully. ‘Would you suggest I should, like Don, maintain moral and human values, and aim to create a human soul, instead of fall for the materialistic, industrial, scientific aim to create ideas and techniques?’
‘Great question,’ Frederic replied. He felt his answer would indeed be along those lines. He had another mindless pause. After a few minutes he called it quits. Somehow he knew a better answer laid around the corner, and was coming to greet him.
7.How do children think? Pure.
Flashforward as well as backward
Who: I play with my daddy all day, and my mommy. Only me is the character, a girl named Janei.
What: Jerry, Frederic, and Bridget are sitting down
Where: At Bridget’s house, on the chair, at their house, on their balcony
When: Now
How: ‘I was having quiet time by myself’, Bridget says, ‘and I was working in the garden with my mommy and daddy, with my red bag polka dots. Here are the polkadots for you.’
‘Thanks.’ Frederic is sincerely thankful. He is a few years older and now and then appreciates a pretend game.
‘Eat them!’
‘How do I eat polka dots?‘ Jerry asks. He just learned how to talk so the others take him with a grain of salt.
‘In your mouth. Look at me, eat one of the polkadots,’ Bridget says. ‘First I take one out, and then…’ she makes a face with tight lips ‘…there is still some left. This is my dinner. Here you can take one. Put it in your mouth.’
Bridget hands it to Frederic’s mouth. He pretends to eat it, then quickly hides it in his hand.
‘Where did it go?’ he asks.
‘In your belly’, Bridget knows. ‘You just chew it and spit it out. OK? like this.’ She makes a spitting sound. ‘And we are going to sit on the roof, on the deck roof. We are going to play monster on the roof.’
Years later…
Jerry wrote a children’s book about the beauty of memories and that little children can indeed become aware of memories older people might have. At what age? The point was that the beauty of memories lay in understanding how beautiful memories could be, that is, understanding what it means to be (in the world).
He had made a few pictures. Acrylic, water, oil, all together. A bit messy, but just his style. He had made it into a book, something like this:
Bridget on main street Bridget tells Jerry to get the boat. She has a meeting in Babylon, the origin of all languages.
Jerry in the fields looking for a boat, finding the right barking tree in all languages.
Jerry and his dog, years later, reading a book of gold on his balcony. A most beautiful memory could mean the world to anyone.
Bridget and Jerry on their bike ride (both 8 years old) with Jerry’s father Hank. In further pictures, the road ahead meant more darkness and with that a lot of hassle. But there was hope in each ray of the universe. And she was always reminded of rays at The Cove.
But it ended well with typically a place to have such a memory.
A memory as a palace.
On a desk table, Bridget sat down to explain that the washing machines Jerry, Frederic, and Bridget had ordered were to be delivered tomorrow, at least according to her information. In the meantime an audiobook on knowledge and time hung by her ear. Here’s an excerpt from that book. Jerry and Frederic were listening to the same book. At the same time. It may have been on speaker.
‘…On the unit “Quantity of knowledge” (0-100),’ the narrator blurted out, ‘the following assumption can be made:
0=the conviction that one knows everything (with knowledge = 0)
, 100=the conviction that one knows nothing (with knowledge = 100)
Socrates then assumes that the awareness of knowing little shows itself more and more emphatically as one learns more.’
‘Wow,’ Jerry, Frederic, and Bridget thought to themselves. They also felt others might feel the same. In fact, they knew they felt the same. They had attuned their inner logos to intuitively feel others while feeling themselves. They had tripled in size their inner worlds and could finally use the space imminent to every being but which usually not a soul used.
Frederic had the feeling that he was losing it. He didn’t see himself as a person capable of doing anything really well, especially raising children. He had two children, and didn’t want to lie about it any longer. What he had really liked doing as a kid, probably up until the age of 15, was being in love with girls, reading in English about the Numinous in Rudolf Otto and listening to Tupac and Outkast. After 15, these in themselves amazing hobbies became more of an agonizing tendency that he simply couldn’t stop, such that amazing in themselves turned golden for a day. Feeling love for girls had touched him so deeply that at the age of 40 he could still remember ‘visually taking in’ a specific girl on the street corner and sensing a shorter but qualitatively intact and same special feeling, with a similar yet framed taste of what he had experienced as a 5-year-old boy.
He would get this hunch by focussing deeply on that moment in time as a special moment, remembering how it foregrounded itself in lived time, by way of its direct connection to emotion. ‘This emotion then felt like it was everything, as in: aren’t emotions just what we remember to just have felt really deeply, astonishingly deeply, taking over our worlds, even if for just a second?
‘Nested time-scales’, replied Jerry, who had been attentively listening. `We know language is layered in the brain-body-world. The body is a system that sustains interactions among nested time-scales. WST or self-sustaining of multiple time-scales simultaneously. We avoid physical-mental dialectic in such a way that the brain-body-world suddenly makes sense.’
No one understood what Jerry had been uttering. Except they did on a somewhat deeper level. Bridget wanted to mix in her knowledge. ‘Media adapt and attach themselves to the status and dynamic of outside occurrences/events/content.
‘Fremdbedingt’, in German, extrinsically/externally determined medium. Unity versus plurality as loose coupling, you can only know media by referring back to core content.‘
Jerry stood just there, attempting a balanced pose. Frederic was, as always, ready to say healing words.
‘The path to follow towards achieving this kind of reasoning automation,’ he gestured something wavy with his right hand, nigh reluctantly, ‘whereby any emotion is only in hindsight possible, or rather rehearsed and performed, has to come from a framed echo that you can tune into. The frame itself is you, the echo is your former you or system of memories. Why is it strange to hear that echo?’ Jerry wondered if his thoughts were anywhere near to a new path forward. For him, and perhaps others. But likely others that weren’t too near to him. Rather they were in his second or third circle of otherwise really intimate friends.’
Bridget suddenly yelled: ‘Let’s go to the beach, get some fresh air!’
But Frederic, who had been both listening to the audiobook and (potential) thoughts of others and himself, and had spoken simultaneously earlier, disagreed, again. He was always ready to downplay her urges. ‘Let’s wait one second, I needed to make this point about Marshall McLuhan,’ he said with a big smile, ‘with Marshall McLuhan we have to ask ourselves if languages are how we perceive and understand the content and the medium, at once, and whether language is customizable, which it is not, really. We then have to ask ourselves if language is located somewhere with an own structure or an own grammar of sorts, apart from in data centers. In your head. If you think of a girl on a bus in India and connect it to the phrase ‘sunken away into trance’ to refer to how we went from clocks for work, to print for leisure. Reading the time was (and is) far more important, but print can be so nice and smooth, and forms an elegant sliding away of your morning or night.’
Bridget and Jerry stood as though nailed to the floor. Slowly their mouths opened. Frederic had just spoken what they would otherwise have picked up from him, but which now took up two out of three channels, with only the last one, themselves, to focus on for the next steps to take.