By Brian George
Where in the objective universe would we look for human meaning? What exactly would it look like? Would we know it if we found it, and if so, how? The Human Consciousness Project finds only correspondences.
Let us think of the objective universe as a stage—where arc lamps throw enormous shadows. The subject, and the things that he writes, are small. Thus, in the beginning, is the word, before glyphs are cast into disconnected sentences. In turn, these serve to coagulate the ocean. Some glyphs are bent and mutilated by the format of thee tornado, which spits them out. Others stick like bones out of the black mud of the flood-plain. Again, Earth’s axis tilts, removing every megaplex that is larger than a seed.
Each actor comes equipped with a mobile alexandrine library, which, to some, looks much like DNA. It is stocked with overdetermined symbols, whose implications it is up to him to intuit, as he learns to see without eyes.
Homer dreams of the discovery of Troy by Hienrich Schlieman. A mere 2600 years later, in his top hat, Schlieman starts to dig. Death comes to Aeschylus in the form of a falling turtle—that an eagle attempts to crack open on his head. There are no books inside. The Dark Ages do not begin in 476 AD. The birth of literacy, says Plato, is the beginning of the end.
With his left foot Dante salutes the rising sun of the Renaissance. Guttenberg’s type allows millions to partake in the wonders of Leviticus. All bad seeds are discarded, with the words that gave them life. Marx pronounces an anathema against the onion domes of St. Petersburg. Icons burn. Mother Courage collaborates on a script with the Warlords of Atlantis. Symbols call Saturn to request a new sacrificial act, since the blood from two world wars is not enough. Predestination bobs like a buoy on the gulf.
Before committing suicide by jumping in the Atlantic Ocean, the poet Hart Crane—heir to the Life Saver fortune—stops to meticulously fold his raincoat over a deck chair. Fate simultaneously conceals the archetypal story it reveals. Details articulate only one half of the pattern. A pregnant emptiness is waiting to exist.
(Illustration: Rene Magritte)
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