VERONICA: Let's take a moment! This may be the last time this view prevails: the cliffs! the mountains in the distance! the horizon itself! Forces clashing seaward in a short time will determine how life engages with this environment for the next billion years or so! Meanwhile, as the champion of the Archaeons and the standard-bearer of the Eukaryotes duke it out in real time, deep in Earth's core, borne on waves of energy, the master track of the planet contains the outcome of the future and the residue of the past, only we can't read it!
PHILCO: Is it too late to take you up on that taco?
PHILCO: Is it too late to take you up on that taco?
PHILCO: I have a difficult time understanding how these separate ways of seeing coexist or that one consciousness can straddle the border between worlds!
VERONICA: Consider the Appian Way!
PHILCO: Happy and weigh what?
VERONICA: What?
PHILCO: You said, "Happy and weigh..." and I said, "Happy and weigh what?"
VERONICA: Hard to hear over the engine! I said the Appian Way, an ancient road that extends from Rome to Brindisi, 400 miles. Think of that, and put a chariot in the middle of it.
PHILCO: What's the chariot for?
VERONICA: To remind us of Zeno--it's a paradox!
VERONICA: Consider the Appian Way!
PHILCO: Happy and weigh what?
VERONICA: What?
PHILCO: You said, "Happy and weigh..." and I said, "Happy and weigh what?"
VERONICA: Hard to hear over the engine! I said the Appian Way, an ancient road that extends from Rome to Brindisi, 400 miles. Think of that, and put a chariot in the middle of it.
PHILCO: What's the chariot for?
VERONICA: To remind us of Zeno--it's a paradox!
PHILCO: Of course it's a pair of dots! The road from Rome to Brindisi is indicated by a pair of dots; every line is! What's he know?
VERONICA: Zeno!
PHILCO: Yeah, what's he know?
VERONICA: He was an ancient who demonstrated the contradictions imposed by language and a particular viewpoint! The highway exists in two distinct realities, understood broken into segments, league after league by the charioteer in the road, and as a single, but incomprehensibly enormous construction 400 miles long!
PHILCO: Even so: I no-a like to have the charioteer in the middle of the road!
VERONICA: Why not?
PHILCO: Thats-a skip over the best-a part-- "Chariot begins at Rome."***
VERONICA: Zeno!
PHILCO: Yeah, what's he know?
VERONICA: He was an ancient who demonstrated the contradictions imposed by language and a particular viewpoint! The highway exists in two distinct realities, understood broken into segments, league after league by the charioteer in the road, and as a single, but incomprehensibly enormous construction 400 miles long!
PHILCO: Even so: I no-a like to have the charioteer in the middle of the road!
VERONICA: Why not?
PHILCO: Thats-a skip over the best-a part-- "Chariot begins at Rome."***
VERONICA: Besides having an understanding of reality imposed upon us by random circumstance, we Eukaryotes manipulate language and order our experience with it, further attenuating our actual knowledge of the big picture! Take money, for instance!
PHILCO: Why? Do you have any?
VERONICA: Money is the ultimate abstraction, signifying a set of arbitrary values for everything and expressing absolutely nothing about some object's worth! We know with remarkable accuracy how much it would cost to wipe out smallpox on the subcontinent or the price of a Kewpie doll on the third shelf above the Skee-Ball arcade, and yet we are blind to the value of life itself and hellbent on destroying all of Nature and ourselves for a pocket full of coins!
PHILCO: All this tsuris is because of the whales, isn't it? They never forgave us for those tacky gift shops on Nantucket!
(left) Aurora (We Don't Live In the Real World; We Just Use It to Keep Score!), found paper, cardboard, paste, 38 X 24" (2021).
PHILCO: Why? Do you have any?
VERONICA: Money is the ultimate abstraction, signifying a set of arbitrary values for everything and expressing absolutely nothing about some object's worth! We know with remarkable accuracy how much it would cost to wipe out smallpox on the subcontinent or the price of a Kewpie doll on the third shelf above the Skee-Ball arcade, and yet we are blind to the value of life itself and hellbent on destroying all of Nature and ourselves for a pocket full of coins!
PHILCO: All this tsuris is because of the whales, isn't it? They never forgave us for those tacky gift shops on Nantucket!
(left) Aurora (We Don't Live In the Real World; We Just Use It to Keep Score!), found paper, cardboard, paste, 38 X 24" (2021).