Book of Jim: Agnostic Parables and Dick Jokes From Lucifer's Paradise (3 page)

“I don’t.  But you guys are just being dicks.  If you get to put me on trial for being stupid, I should get to put you on trial for being dicks.”

“Objection.  Argumentative.”

“Sustained.”

“What?!  You’re the ones that asked for a fucking argument!”

Shakespeare put a hand on Jim’s shoulder.  “If it pleases the Court,” he said, “I’ll put these quibbles to rights.”

“Proceed.” 

So Shakespeare took the floor.  He took it with classical swagger.  He said,

“The Court’s Imperative is the noblest undertaking in the history of humankind.  Of that we have no doubt.  To scour the plane of Paradise for wayward dreaming, and to smash such dreaming against the crags of progressive thinking – what pursuit could challenge it?  So I salute you.  Jim salutes you.  Well done, gentlemen, indeed.

“And I commend the prosecution’s handling of the case.  A picture painted any clearer would confound the edges of the scene depicted.  My client, Jim, has irrefutably asked a question to which he himself cannot apply an answer – an egregious affront to the dynasties of good thinking.  I assure you that Jim has expressed to me a grave remorse, and that he is horrified at the prospect that the meat of his brain is a weight on the wings of your wonderings.  But the deed was done.  The question was asked.

“But is it worse to think a stupid thought, or never to have thought to think at all?  The Court’s Imperative may justly hold to vain account the meaty brains of men, and through its justice might preserve the meat it means to spoil.  And though my client is on trial for tossing questions, I would toss the Court another:

“What soul in Paradise would shine so dull, as one by Reason painted nub to skull?”

“Objection.  Poetry.”

“Sustained.”

“My client in his Heart defies the Pang your coward Minds pretend to understand!  He asks in earnest what the prosecution merely quoths beneath bombastic veils!”

“Mr. Shakespeare, I advise you to be less poetic and more reasonable.”

“The question is the food that feeds the soul!”

“Bailiff, remove the poet.”

So the bailiff took Shakespeare by the shoulders and removed him from the courtroom.  And Jim stood alone at the defendant’s table in the Court of Existence.

6

And Judge Russell said, “The defendant, Jim, shown here to be guilty of discharging a loaded question into the face of human suffering and in the presence of an angel –”

“And over Prussia!”

“Yes, over Prussia.”  Judge Russell took out from his pocket a tiny cannon and placed it on the bench.  “As Jim loads his questions with superfluities, the superfluities of his person shall be loaded into this tiny cannon, and fired in no particular direction.”

Kant approached the bench and he handed the judge three books.  The two men conferred.

“Furthermore,” said Judge Russell, “Jim shall be required to read and comprehend the ontologies of Sartre, Heidegger, and Spinoza before coming aground.”

The bailiff took Jim by the shoulders and dragged him across the courtroom.  Jim couldn’t remember a courtroom movie in which this circumstance had arisen, so he had no objection to make.  Therefore his
whole person
was stuffed into the tiny canon. 

Three books followed him, and they
were
the ontologies of Sartre and Heidegger and Spinoza, and each book bonked him on the head.  In the circle of light at the end of the barrel of the tiny cannon, he beheld the glare of the
left
eye of Kant. 

“Seriously, why are you such a dick?” he said.

And the left-eyed glare of Kant glared
lefter
.  “And still he loads his questions!  I move that the Court extend his sentence to include the meditations of Descartes and all the paragraphs of Aristotle!”

So two more books bonked Jim on the head, and they
were
the meditations of Descartes and the paragraphs of Aristotle.

Then there was a flick, a hiss, and a boom.  Jim crashed through a window and became a bullet over
paradise
.  The five books flapped about him as pigeons and they pecked at his arms and legs.  Until he grabbed one and began to read:

“Modern thought has realized considerable progress by reducing the existent to the series of appearances which manifest it.”

Jim thought, Well there goes eternity.

IV

1

Forty years came to pass.  Jim passed over mountains and oceans and deserts.  He passed over entire worlds.  He passed over the plane of
paradise
until the plane was no more, and the land and the sky fell away to darkness.

And Jim was still no closer to solving existence.  For though he read the ontologies
of
Sartre and Heidegger and Spinoza, and the meditations
of
Descartes, and the paragraphs
of
Aristotle, he
was
Jim. 

So he remained in motion through the darkness at the edge of
paradise
.  Without light by which to read, he meditated on the vague impressions of the first reading, and he made things much worse.

For he took the
cogito
of Descartes, the
bad faith
of Sartre, and the
phenomenology
of Heidegger, and he mashed them up in his brain until he became convinced that there were an infinite number of Jims.  And this infinity, forever present throughout time and space, denied reality to all
particular
Jims.  Therefore all Jims were also not Jim, and this
particular
Jim was here and now and then he
wasn’t
.  And then he
was
.  And then he
wasn’t
.

In this anguish and through darkness he moved.

2

It was in the fortieth year that the darkness broke.  It was broken by two lights in the distance.  Jim couldn’t tell whether the lights moved towards him, or he towards the lights, for there was no frame of reference.  But the lights got bigger and bigger, until they became the headlights of a 1969 Ford F-100 pick-up truck.

A head popped out of the driver’s side window.  The face was old and electric.  The eyes were deep and frazzled hair jumped out of the head.  Jim knew the face.

“Einstein?”

“You goddamn crazy hillbilly!” Einstein said.  “I finally found it!  The edge of
paradise
, I had it at my fingertips, and you blew it out your noggin!”

“Me?”

“That goddamn hillbilly brain of yours.  I don’t know what you’ve been thinking, or how you thought it up, but for the love of science forget about it.  Get in, I’ll explain on the way.”

So Jim got in and Einstein floored it.  The engine of the 1969 Ford F-100 pick-up truck roared.  There was still no frame of reference but Jim could feel the acceleration of the truck, and the darkness became as a bumpy gravel road.

“What’s wrong with thinking?”  Jim said.  He wanted there to be something wrong with his thinking, but he couldn’t think of a reason for it.

“Not all thinking.  Certain kinds of it. 
Philosophy
.”

“So what’s wrong with philosophy?”

“It’s phenomenally retarded.”

“What?”

“This place,
paradise
, it gives dimensionality to our thoughts.  It is difficult to picture, but think of spacetime as the surface of a balloon, a very big balloon, and everything you experience is experienced on that surface.  All of these fulfilled desires must occupy a certain amount of spacetime on the surface area of the balloon, and each new desire expands it.  Without expansion there can be nothing new.  The obvious question, then, is what fuels the expansion?  What fills the balloon?”

Jim guessed, “Dark matter.”  Einstein ignored this and continued,

“It is our thoughts themselves, the volume of which is perfectly proportional to the surface area of the phenomenal sphere, as long as the thoughts produce phenomena.  If you want a turkey sandwich, the desire fills the balloon, the sandwich occupies the surface, and proportionality is preserved.  If, however, you wonder why the turkey sandwich
is
a turkey sandwich, the wonder fills the balloon but there is no surface expansion to compensate.  Do you see why this is problematic?”

“Kind of.” 

“Soon there will be too much air in the balloon, and
paradise
will
pop
!”

Jim considered this in silence.  For though Einstein had forbidden thinking, he had said nothing about
consideration
.  So the 1969 Ford F-100 pick-up truck roared through the gravel of darkness, and Jim considered spacetime and phenomenal spheres.  When the considering time was over, he said,

“So, what you’re saying is, philosophy is bullshit.”

“And it will destroy
paradise
.”

“And if that’s true, then there aren’t really an infinite number of Jims.”

“What!?  Who is Jim?!”

“I’m Jim.”

“You goddamn crazy hillbilly!”

3

So Jim came to the edge of
paradise
, and he beheld that it was a brick wall.  The brick wall went up forever, it went down forever, and it went to both sides forever.  It
was
infinite.  And at the bottom there was a neat row of hedges and a sidewalk and the sidewalk was lit with lampposts.

Einstein parked the 1969 Ford F-100 pick-up truck in the parking lot next to a public restroom.  There were also some benches and swingsets and picnic tables and an Information Gazebo.  On the asphalt lay a flyer that said, Live Death on the Edge!  And beneath the slogan were some directions.

Jim said, “This place used to be a tourist trap?”

Einstein nodded.  “The edge was once a twenty dollar cab ride.  But as philosophy approaches the critical point of asininity, the expansion of
paradise
makes the journey impractical.”

“So why are we here?”

“I need to go through.”

“Through the brick wall?”

“To the other side.  To the
antiverse
.”

Einstein went forth along the sidewalk and Jim followed.  Though the scientist strolled with a firm gait, Jim struggled to keep his feet, and several times he began to float away.  Upon each floating, the scientist grabbed him by the foot and pulled him back into orientation.

Upon the last floating Jim began to think.  He thought, If Einstein goes through the brick wall, doesn’t the
antiverse
just become more
paradise
?  If there’s a place beyond places, and you get there, then what’s beyond that?  I mean, you’ve got to be
someplace
.

And the brick wall receded by the measure of the width of Jim’s head.

“Hillbilly!”

Einstein was probably right-side-up, but Jim could not deny the sensation that he was a wonderful center, and the universe turned about him.  And if he
was
a wonderful center, then Einstein was sideways and the sidewalk was a ladder.

And the brick wall receded by the measure of the width of Jim’s head squared.

So Einstein grabbed him by the foot and pulled him once more into orientation.  “What are you thinking?  Out with it!  Our proximity to the edge is intensifying its expansion.  Out with it!”

“Well,” said Jim, “if
paradise
expands because of thinking, and you’re thinking about the
other side
of
paradise
, doesn’t that mean that
paradise
includes
the
other side
of
paradise
?”

“No!”

“Well why not?”

“Brick.  Fucking.  Wall.”

Einstein pointed, and Jim once more beheld the brick wall.  It
was
impressive.  But not
that
impressive, he thought.  If there was an
other side
, the wall could hardly be
infinite.
  And what about going right or left, to the place where the wall ended?  Was there more than one
other side
?  Unless the wall was really a big hollow sphere and
paradise
was
inside
of it.  But then, the
other side
would really be the
outside
.  And what was outside of
that
?

And the brick wall receded by the measure of the width of Jim’s head cubed.

Einstein shook him by the shoulders.  “Listen to me very carefully,” he said.  “All that we can do is observe that there
is
a wall.  Once the observation is made, it is our task to break
through
the wall.  We must not dwell upon it, because dwelling just pushes it further away.  Such is philosophy.  But we are here for science, Jim.  Science!”

This made some sense to Jim.  He said, “So it’s like, focus on what’s in front of you.  Start with what you can see.”

“Precisely,” Einstein said.  “And in front of you is a wall.”

So the two of them stood in silence and beheld the wall together.  And when the idea came to Jim, he flinched at it, for he expected the wall to recede.  The wall remained.

“What about the truck?” he said.

“The truck?”

“That thing is a classic.  Last of the Mercury M series and the first with a Windsor V8.  I’ll bet her frame is good old-fashioned steel, too.  She might get you through this wall.”

“Well,” said Einstein, “perhaps if I drive
really
fast.”

4

Jim stood on the sidewalk at the bottom of the infinite brick wall.  He watched as Einstein pulled the truck out of the parking lot and drove it far into the darkness.  Jim couldn’t join him, for quoth the scientist,

“You’re too dumb to bring back useful information.”

The truck looped around and once more Jim beheld the two lights in the distance.  They grew larger and became closer at a pace that
was
beyond his comprehension.  He sucked a breath, time quivered in the gaps of space, and then there was a big crash.

In the wall there was a hole in the shape of the truck.  Jim thought, It’s like Looney Tunes.  Einstein just Looney Tuned a Ford into the
antiverse
.

But he didn’t look
through
the hole, for he was afraid of what he might think about
that
, and what such thinking might destroy.

Then a plain white envelope floated through the hole.  It was addressed to: Jim, Near the Hole in the Infinite Wall at the Edge of
paradise.
  Jim took up the envelope and opened it, for it
was
addressed to him, and he found inside a letter and a pair of dice.  The dice were glossy red.  The letter said,

Dear Jim,

It worked!  You goddamn crazy hillbilly, it worked!  The
antiverse
is at the mercy of the powers of observation.  The spacetime here is a bit outrageous though, and my observations will take a while, so don’t wait up.  If you have trouble finding your way back, just think of the biggest number you can think of, and then add one to it.  That should do the trick.

Albert Einstein

PS

I found the dice hiding behind the wall.  I have no use for them.  Good luck, hillbilly!

So Jim took the dice and put them in his pocket.  Then he thought of the biggest number he could think of and added one to it.  Having thought of a bigger biggest number, he added one again.  He did this for a while.

And when the number filled his head completely, he both made and did not make a final addition.  His head collapsed into a black hole, and the superfluities of his person were sucked inside.