Narratives

Transidental Illumination,
Perpetual Regeneration,
and Goat Farming
Frankensteinal Beginnings of a Quantum Reality
The 1985 Experiments of Joe McDonald M.D.

True Life

The Story:
  In case you're wondering what this is all about.

  
* Now Listen:
In 1985, farmer Joe McDonald awoke at 6:23 to perform the daily ritual of milking his goats.  Joe had once been a member of academia with degrees in micro-biology and quantum theory.  In the papers he published, he discussed the striking similarities between Western theoretical sciences and Eastern philosophy.  On February 23, 1980 at 3:23 in the morning Joe is anxiously working on a theory.  Open books pile his desk like family portraits.  Joe's frantic searching spills forth into the room, charging it like a battery.  As the energy increases, the room grows tense, dislodging a stack of balanced books.  They fall to the ground in a large THUMP!  Startled, Joe jerks up hitting his head on the light and crushing the bulb.  A bolt of energy surges into his head, down the spinal column, exiting at his lower back.  He falls to the ground unconscious.
And in Cologne Germany, at a Frank Zappa concert, we hear the crowd chanting the words "Turn Turn, Turn Turn, We're Turning again."
And on February 23rd, 1954, at a jazz club called the Five-Spot, Thelonious Monk rises from the piano and begins spinning around and around in rhythmic drunkenness to the sounds of Epistrophy.


Joe put on some clothes while drinking a cup of coffee, then walked outside where the chickens and dogs anxiously awaited his arrival.  Joe knelt down and gave a good-morning-hug to all the dogs; they wagged with excitement.  As Joe regains consciousness, the study is black and silent.  Joe feels a slight tingling in his stomach, and a smile stretches across his face.  He starts to chuckle and was soon laughing hysterically.  (So hard in fact, he must consciously try to calm himself down in order to gasp for air.)  Somewhere a lone gunman had carefully taken aim and fired his gun.  The bullet raced through time and space squarely hitting Joe with a cerebral gunshot.  In a flash, Joe was transcendentally illuminated.  Still laughing, he rose to his feet and performed a theatrical bow to an unknown audience.

What did the Buddha say to the hot-dog vendor?
Make me one with everything. 
The morning caravan made its way to the goat pasture; the dogs barked and Joe smiled.  As the caravan approached, the goats formed a figure-8, walking around the contour with marching precession.  This was their way of saying hello.  They do it every morning.  Standing alone in the darkness, Joe glances around him.  He notes that although no light is present, he can feel various energies which allow him to maneuvour with ease;
similar-but-different, to a bat's sonar ability.  He walks to a phone and calls the university which employs him as faculty.  Obviously nobody answers at this time of night, so he leaves a brief message on his chairman's answering machine:

"Mr. Goodfellow, this is Joe McDonald.  I regret to inform you that I  shall be leaving the faculty immediately.  I understand that my departure  will create a large dilemma for you and I express my deepest apology, but  there is nothing I can do.  Something has come up, you might say, which is  out of my control.  Please don't worry about me nor inquire on my  whereabouts.  I think I have discovered that which I have always sought,  but I need time to see it through.  Again, I apologise and thank you for  your understanding."

"Turn Turn, Turn Turn, We're Turning Again"   

And in 1969 at a strange musical gathering they call Woodstock, another Joe McDonald sings,
"one two three, what are we fighting for?
don't ask me I don't give a damn, next stop is Viet-Nam
five six seven, open up the pearly gates,
there aint no time to wonder why, whoo-pee were all gonna die."
But this man should not be confused with our protagonist.  Our Joe does not believe in death.   He had heard a lecture by Billy Pilgrim about his experiences on the planet Tralmafador.  Billy said that the Tralmafadorians perceived everything in four dimensions.  They see all time as we see a patch of the Rocky Mountains.  All moments exist, always have existed, and always will exist.  All things will die, always have died, and always will die.  Time is, always was, and always will be a fixed phenomenon.  If you're still thinking linear thoughts, then you haven't heard a word I've said.   

Joe and the dogs walk into the goat pasture; which is actually a maintained crop from which the goats gather their nutrients.  This might seem like a waste of time and energy, but Joe's goats are super-intelligent. 
Joe had been giving them an injection of an experimental self-awareness drug every 23rd day for several years, but that's another story.  The goats shift from a figure-8 to a circle with Joe at the center.  The dogs weave in and out in elliptical extensions.  (They too had been injected).  Instinctively they all broke the pattern and merged into the daily migration to the milking barn.  The morning sun pierced through the clouds illuminating the dew on the golden milo.  Kea birds performed netless acrobatics over head; Joe waved as they past. 

Hanging up the phone, Joe feels a sudden desire to undress himself.  At a deritualizing pace, Joe removes his clothing, carefully folding and placing each piece by the phone.  Standing nude, he takes in a deep breath.  He's conscious as the air enters his mouth, passing through the throat down to the expanding lungs.  He holds it in, observing the pressure mounding in his chest, every pore in his body opens itself in acceptance.  And then Joe releases into a hallucinatory-dream-world. 
Everything is composed of energy.  There is no distinction between things.  Rather, the distinction lies between different manifestations of energy. 

(Imagine things not as nouns, but verbs.)

Thinking logically, Joe realises he is perceiving the world as a quantium-demential-fractiling that defies our common sense.  In fact it defies our whole conception of a time-space-continuum.   But like all good transcendentalists before him Joe held up old Mr. Common Sense and give his a good slap across the face.  Joe wanders out of his apartment into the infinite.

It is a common sense to think that the earth as flat.

Just then Weisel, a neighbourhood dog, (uninjected), who joins the entourage with Joe each morning, runs over to a section of the field and begins barking nervously and pointing.  The whole group, goats included, ran over to Weisel.  All the dogs were barking as Joe reached the spot and gazed upon a most unusual site.  There hovering just above the ground were a group of hand-knit animals, moving in a mechanical repetition.  Joe hushed up the dogs and took a closer look.  If everything is composed of energy, perpetual regeneration can be created by combining certain energies together, forming a constant loop.  The problem of friction is solved by using opposing energies as lubricants, conductors that propel the energy by repelling it, similar-but-different, to a magnetic field. 

Conjunctio Oppositorum:  The coincidence of opposites.

Despite it being the middle of the night, 4:23 to be exact, Joe's presence was still detected by a few passerbys, but not in the way you might imagine.  In Joe's hyper-sensitive-energetic-state, his physical self had ceased to obey the natural laws of matter.  What those pedestrians experienced was not a man, completely naked, wandering the streets and rambling to himself, but a surge of energy that quickly fades as Joe departs. 
Imagine, if you will, the idea that glass is actually composed of a liquid, in our physical state we experience the glass as a solid.  In Joe's quantum-dimensional (transcendental)-state, he experiences glass as liquid. 

Hare Krishna  Hare Hare 

Listen:  As Joe gazed upon the unusual dolls he relapsed into a state of de-ja-vu.  His body tensed up as images emerged deep in his consciousness.  Like a flash he was absorbed into the dream of their creation, his creation: the workings of perpetual regeneration.  Relapsing into forgotten memories, Joe takes a few steps back and collapses to the ground.  Joe has now left the city.  As he walks he notices that with each stride he is covering a vast distance.  His feet never actually touch the ground, but are held away by a thin field of repelling energy;  Ice-skating the infinite.

Visualize the energy beneath you feet,
You begin to feel the distance from your sole to the earth,
the tickling sensation as the energy touches your skin,
You have a slight feeling of weightlessness,
You are floating.
You Want To Believe. 
You Are Floating!

The animals, in a worried state, gathered around Joe; all of them licking his hands and face.  And then they licked nothing.  Joe had relapsed into a transcendental state.  The animals, obviously baffled, dismantle the group and spread off in different directions, all searching for their friend and provider Joe.  The goats were quite panicked.  It was milking time with no one to milk them.  Their udders began to swell.  Joe finally stopped motion.  The energy around him was piercing with potentency.  In actuality, he was standing within a strong point of the Van-Allen-Belt.  Compelled by unknown forces, in a way similar-but-different from a marionette, he begins the process of creating perpetual regeneration.  Joe instinctively follows the way, never sure of the next step until it's completed.  He begins by conjuring an energy vacuum, a void contradicting our 'known' natural laws.  Within this void, a band of energy follows the pattern of a Moebius Strip; fractling into infinite interconnectedness.  Like a magician, Joe places a single particle into the band.  It is at once carried along the strip.  As the momentum increases, the strip begins to glow in an iridescent spectrum.  It grows brighter and brighter until Joe was forced to turn away.  And then there was nothing.

And Billy Pilgrim, speaking under one of Bucky's geodesic domes, goes on to say, "If you still fear death, then you haven't heard a word I said."
And back at the Five-Spot, Thelonious Monk sits back down to the piano.  His fingers rhythmically collapse onto the keys in the nostalgic stride style.  In the audience a young writer, Joseph E. Stockbridge, is mesmerized.  The cigarette in his hand has burnt out, leaving a long ash; tracing his immobility.  No one in that room, including Joseph, could ever of known that he would be elected president of the United States on November 23rd, 2004.  I, that is, Justin, the author of this story, didn't even know that.

As the animals scattered, Joe became conscious within his transcendental state.  As the memories reinstated themselves, Joe regained the ability to slip in and out of physical matter.  And the goats stood stunned as Joe reinstated himself into their reality.  Shaking, as though chilled, Joe hoists himself into a standing position.  The dogs come running back, tongues flung out to one side out ready to lick skin upon impact.  Joe's eyes glowed in a frightened understanding.  Transcendental Illumination is not some kind of universal truth; rather, it is a state of Joe's own creation.  We're to assume it lies far closer to insanity than enlightenment, but then again, what's the difference. 
If someone is enlightened, we think he/she is crazy for acknowledging it. 
If someone is crazy, we think he/she is enlightened for acknowledging it.  Similar-but-different to a catch 22. 
And where there was nothing, Joe spotted a small life-energy emerging from the particle.  Joe lowered his gaze to get a closer look.  Sure enough, the particle had been transformed into a small organism.  Though matterless, it took the form of an animal-like humanoid.  Joe repeated the procedure: then there were two.  And so on.
And in the hills of Appalachia, prophet Josephine Superconductor, is explaining the concept of our Lord-God-Jehova-Yohweh to a group of trees.  They don't respond, but Josephine 'knows' they understood.

Back in linear time and space, but haunted by transcendentalism, Joe performs the daily ritual of milking his goats.  Each one smiles as the swelling decreases.  Joe does not smile, his mind is back in 1980.  Upon reaching 23 life-energy forms, Joe knows that his work is completed.  These organisms will perpetually regenerate every 5 years.  A new organism grows from the old one, and once fully developed, the old one dies and splits off from the new one.  The new one, in turn, consumes the old one in a cannibalistic acknowledgement of being.  Joe stumbles back and slips back into time-space-matter reality.  He can no longer detect his newly created friends.  Thinking logically again, he decides these new life forms must have a way to manifest themselves within physical matter.  So in a humorous joke that only Joe understands, he knit a variety of animals and utilizing teleportational transference, the life forms infest the animals from the outside in.


Joe pulls himself back to the present for a moment, then relapses to the 23rd of August, 1997.  On this date Joe had gathered all his specimens from the 1980-1985 experiment and placed them on public display under the title: "Transcendental Illumination, Perpetual Regeneration, and Goat Farming:"  with the subtitles, "frankensteinal beginnings of a quantum reality, an archival presentation of the eccentric vision of Joe McDonald M.D. (Master of Deception)" 
Despite this being a time when the concepts of alien and paranormal are commonly conditioned into the human species, Joe's exhibition was received with hostility and rejection.  The main critique was his lack of professionalism: the fact that his story did not make sense to anyone.  Nobody could understand why Joe would want to place these strange life-forms into knit animals.

"...eclectic fragmentary nothingness, ...Joe says nothing about nothing, and he's a bad illustrator to boot,"  wrote the Time Out art editor, Jason Morley.  "This is 1997, the public wants 'unmasked' aliens, none of this alternative-dimention-flakey-stuff," and so on. 

So now in the earth year 2023, Joe McDonald wakes up to perform the daily ritual of milking his goats.  Joe looks out toward the earth, which is about the size of a marble.  "Boy she's looking beautiful today."  All the goats nod in agreement.  One goat, named Jesus, telepathically asks Joe if we would ever return.  Joe shifted his gaze from the earth to Jesus.
ect.


thend, similar-but-different from the beginning

afterward

Joe reached into his pocket grabbing his wallet.  He unfolded the well-worn, somewhat deformed leather.  It used to have an engraving of a deer, or maybe a buffalo.  Joe couldn't remember, and it really doesn't matter, so we're leave it at that.  He fiddles through the contents until he recovers a crumpled piece of paper.  It had been in his wallet for years and  could scarcely remember why he had it in the first place.  He carefully unfolded it.  Here's what it said:

"Your reality tunnel has collapsed.
Seek shelter."
   
And so he did.

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