The Instructions (68 page)

Abnormal Places

In abnormally still and quiet places like classrooms, although there 628

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are many available fullthings for A to fix on—many available things that demand exactly 100 units of A—there are hardly any that demand less than 100 units. Fidgeting, for example, demands just 10–20 units, depending on the intricacy of the fidget. Another 20–30

units, depending on the quality of the sound, may be demanded by the task of listening to the background noise that gets past where Your earlids would be if You had any. But even if while concentrating on one fullthing, You fidget
and
listen to noise, 25–45 more units remain, and all of them must fix on something.

The Remainder

What the remainder fixes on will be the nearest thing, which—as You are in a place containing few brief actions and little randomness—is almost always going to be a fullthing.

Because a fullthing demands 100 units of A for concentration, the 25–45 unit remainder is insufficient.

But even if You don’t fidget or listen to noise—even if Your 175

units of A are divided between only two fullthings—You are still 25 units shy of the A required to concentrate on both: While 200

units are being demanded by a pair of fullthings, only 175 are available, and that is why the fullthings enter into a cycle of thievery.

An Ultimately Doomed,

However Momentarily Useful, Analogy

To understand the thievery cycle, it is a little bit useful to think of A-units as electrons—to think of A as being stolen back and forth between fullthings to fill their concentration-demands the way electrons get traded between bonded atoms to complete their outer-rings.

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With atoms, the trading of the electrons happens at the speed of light—so fast that it is as if at any given time, each atom has a full outer ring, which is why it is only a
little
bit useful to think of A like electrons: A does not move nearly as fast as light, and so A is never as if in more than one place at a time. When demanded A arrives at one fullthing, that fullthing holds onto it for a second or two while the other fullthing demands it back; not only that, but the A takes time to travel from one fullthing to the other.

So then, with two fullthings demanding Your A, the following four arrangements cycle over a period of seconds: 1. Fullthing1 has 100 units and Fullthing2 has 75 units 2. Fullthing1 has 75 units, Fullthing2 has 75 units, and 25 units are traveling from Fullthing1 to Fullthing2

3. Fullthing1 has 75 units and Fullthing2 has 100 units 4. Fullthing1 has 75 units, Fullthing2 has 75 units, and 25 units are traveling from Fullthing2 to Fullthing1

In a vacuum, this cycle would repeat forever, but You are never in a vacuum. This cycle is only the beginning of a larger one.

The Larger One

Within a few passes, something, usually a fullthing, will get in the path of the traveling A-units (i.e., during arrangement 2 or 4) and the units will fix on that something so that now there are three fullthings demanding concentration = three fullthings demanding 100 units each. This not only decreases the frequency at which each fullthing within the cycle possesses 100 units, but increases the 630

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overall number of units being demanded at any given time. Worse than that, the amount of time that the A is in transit increases, which creates more opportunities for things—again, usually fullthings—to get in the path of your traveling A. The process thereby continues to degrade at an exponential rate. Nonetheless, it is not an entropic process. If it were entropic, it would eventually stabilize—single units of your A would come to free-float around the universe, fixing on and being stolen from so many random things, both fullthings and non-, that you could never concentrate again.

That very sad kind of math, baruch Hashem, is entirely avoided by means of hyper (H).

A Blessing

H is a blessing. Here is how it arises:

After a certain number of things—usually between 9 and 11, depending on how many are fullthings—have entered the cycle, the paths of the traveling A criss-cross and the A begins to act like a thing, itself = the traveling A itself demands A = You get distracted by the fact of Your distraction = You find Yourself paying attention to Your attention.

And paying attention to Your attention, You find Yourself.

Before, You operated as if the A
was
You, as if it was You being divided and shuffled between fullthings. But now that the A has begun to demand A, You—the most basic You, the part of You that never changes, the part that is always there, that has always been there, watching—You think: If I can
pay
attention
to
my attention, then I must be something other than my attention. You don’t actually think that so much as You watch it get thought, yet it’s at this 631

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point that You come to know, however briefly, that You are neither Your A, nor what Your A fixes on, but a soul. This is where You find out, for the billionth time, that You are partly God. If You were not partly God, how could something like A, something that emanates from You, demand anything of You? If there were no God in You, how could something like A, something that is completely subject to Your will, be capable of willing things on its own, much less things that go against Your will? It couldn’t. And it is here that You become hyper = here You watch, in softer focus than is normally comfortable, every insufficiently concentrated-upon thing that Your A has fixed on at once, and You respond to all of it, at once.

You do not necessarily respond in ways that are best for You, and You do not necessarily respond in ways that are best for the world around You, but You respond to everything. You respond to everything in some way or another because that is the nature of the most basic You, the nature of your God. The nature of God is hyper.

Conclusion

Unlike God, You are not all God (although God is not all
of
God, all of God
is
God: where much of You is made of something else like blood and bones and muscle, He has nothing but Him; He is only God minus the pieces of Himself that are inside of us) so You cannot remain hyper for all too long.

After a few minutes of H, the A units spasm like an overworked muscle. They lose their fix on the things they have fixed on, and the things they had been fixed on no longer demand them. Now only You demand them and so your A returns to You, a few units at a time. How long it all takes to amass depends on how far the units 632

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that were fixed on the farthest thing have to travel. Once it’s all gathered in You, the A quits spazzing and the cycle starts over.

For Further Consideration

The question arises as to whether or not Your A can be aggregated with the A of other Yous in such a way as to satisfy the concentration-demands of fullthings.

I.e. Suppose there are 4 Yous. With 175 A-units per You, the aggregate number of A-units is 700, which is exactly as many A-units as it takes to concentrate on 7 fullthings.

So, if A can be aggregated, then 4 Yous should be able to concentrate on 7 fullthings at once= 4 Yous should be able to perform the tasks of 7 normal people within the same amount of time and space as it would take 4 normal people to perform 4 tasks. In concentrating on 7 fullthings, then—if 4 Yous can in fact aggregate their A to do so—4 Yous would not become hyper; the kind of A-unit slippage that leads to the thievery cycle that occurs when 1 You attempts concentration on 2 fullthings would never begin, for there would be no remainder of A-units in the case of 4 Yous and 7 fullthings.

And just because 4 Yous who are concentrated on 7 fullthings would almost definitely
look
very H to an outsider, that does not make it so. Looking H to the eyes of outsiders may, in fact, be to the advantage of 4 Yous.

E.g. If 4 Yous were soldiers, the 4 Yous could conceivably prepare for and maybe even launch a war’s decisive battle right in front of their enemy without their enemy knowing it = The appearance of the 4 Yous’ H-ness could provide a kind of cover similar to that 633

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of David ben-Jesse’s youth or the Yiddish accent of that Palmach operative’s telephone voice when he gave fair warning to the British.

For what did Goliath see from across the battlefield? He didn’t see a killer taking aim with a deadly weapon. He saw a boy inexplicably swinging a leather strap over his head. A moment later, Goliath was gone. And what did the British colonists hear when the operative phoned in the Palmach’s warning to vacate the King David Hotel?

They didn’t hear the voice of a stealth guerilla group that was about to explode British headquarters. They heard a nut with a Yiddish accent making a prank call. A couple hours later, there was one less place for the Brits to sleep, and quite a few less Brits.

The capacity to aggregate A would be a very useful capacity.

Whether or not such a capacity exists, and how one (or 4 or 8 or 12 or 40) might engage it if it does exist, is surely worth further consideration.

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10

ARTFUL

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Interim–Intramural Bus

ADAM LEVIN

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The tale of Avraham’s tenth test is not about faith, no matter how bad any Israelite or Danish scholar wants it to be. If you’re enough a wiseman to patriarch all Israelites, and you know you’re being spoken to by Adonai—the same Adonai Who made your disobedient in-law a salt-pillar, your barren wife fertile at the age of eighty-nine—you do what He says because you know that if you don’t, He’ll do it Himself, then punish you and the world for your disobedience.

The tale of the tenth test is a testament to Adonai’s mastery of language.

To Avraham, He said, “Please take your son, your only one, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the land of Moriah; bring him up there as an offering upon one of the mountains which I shall tell you” which ≠ “Sacrifice Isaac on the mountain,” even though it seemed to, to Avraham.

And it would have seemed that way to me if I was Avraham, instead of Gurion reading about Avraham. If I was Avraham 636

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instead of Gurion, I would not have suspected God of artfulness. I would not have suspected Him of having built a sentence around loopholes. And I would have done exactly as I was told—exactly as I thought I was told. I would have brought my son up the mountain, prepared to kill him. I would have thought: “Better by my hand than an angel’s, for Isaac is my son, not Theirs, and I will kill him better than would They.”

But despite my sympathies with Avraham, it would be chomsky to insist that Adonai ever explicitly told him to sacrifice Isaac.

He only told him that he should bring Isaac up the mountain “
as
an offering,” which is a very slippery phrase, since it could mean at least a couple of things that ≠ “Sacrifice Isaac on the mountain”

(e.g., “
bring
Isaac as you would
bring
an offering” or “
place him on
a mountain
as you would
place
an offering”), so although Adonai didn’t
lie
to Avraham, or even reneg, He did mislead Avraham, and He knew He was misleading Avraham, and that has always seemed shady to me. Avraham loved Adonai, and Adonai Avraham.

And both of them knew of the other’s love, but only one of them acted like he did.

To hide my anxiousness from June, then, was not to lie to June, and to show up second to detention was not to reneg on her, yet to do these things was shady. Whether she would consider my level of anxiousness or even notice I’d arrived second was beside the point—I hoped she would notice and consider (I knew that I would), and I knew she’d be misled if she noticed and considered, but I would show up second anyway. It is true 637

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I had a justification: I’d told my friend I’d wait for him. It is true the explicit trumps the implicit and that the spoken is a contract, the unspoken at best an understanding, and June and I hadn’t spoken about the exact time at which we’d meet (I’d asked her in Main Hall the day before, leaning back on the lockers, sitting beside her, But how will I see you tomorrow? at which point Miss Gleem said we both had detention, and June answered, “That’s how”), so the most we had was an understanding. But it is also true that I’d arranged my justification (or at the very least allowed for the arrangement of my justification by Nakamook) with no less lawyerliness than Adonai had placed His “as” in that shady commandment.

By the time Benji returned to the Office with Vincie and Leevon, I’d spent an hour hoping to be undermined. If only June could arrive second, I thought, despite my artfulness…

But that’s not what happened.

We arrived at the southern doorway of the lunchroom thirteen minutes before detention started, and June was already inside, at the northern end—Benji’d rushed the last few steps ahead of us and checked.

He told me, “She’s waiting for you. I’ll shut this door and guard it. When the monitor comes up Main Hall, I’ll give you a warning. Get to the other doorway,” he said to Leevon and Vincie, “and if you let anyone in, or start spying on our boy, I’ll pull your guts out through your mouths and feed them to Botha with a shovel. I’ll cut your arms off and roll you down a hill like logs.”

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Vincie and Leevon went to the northern doorway. The northern doorway was doorless. They stretched their arms like tortured Yeshuas across the space between its sidewalls.

“Don’t look so worried,” Nakamook told me. “It’s fine you’re jumpy. It’s a serious thing to be in love with a girl, but worrying is stupid. If she loves you back, it’s because she can’t help it, and if she doesn’t love you back, then you can’t help it. All you’re about to do is find something out. You have no control over this. It’s not a fight and it’s not an argument. Don’t strategize. And forget what I said about anything having to do with girls and how to kiss them. It was just talk. I was just talking to talk because it’s fun to talk. Especially about girls. You look like you’re about to cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry and don’t strategize. This is exciting.