The Cosmological Constant
I had a dream, or rather a very specific premonition that came to me in a dream. I awoke with the unsettled feeling one has when one has a dream that’s a little too real. I shuffled around the apartment in a daze and then, hours later, came across the prophesied letter. Les must have retrieved it from the mailbox.
My dream replayed. The letter said exactly what I thought (knew?) it would. The crisp stationary was a slightly different shade of white.
I consider myself a rational being. I was educated in the hard sciences. I have the German’s surly disposition towards mysticism: I’m not swayed by self-serving preacher-men and psychics, nor does magical thinking hold much interest for me. Certain phenomena in quantum physics notwithstanding, I do not believe in spook-like actions at a distance. But physics and metaphysics failed me here.
So I did what any sane, reasonable person would do when faced with an urgent metaphysical dilemma: I drank heavily. Emma, recently returned from Europe, told us of her adventures as we sat in a godforsaken Upper West Side bar. “Did you have an Italian stud at either end, or what?”
Emma laughed. “No. They were all too young. And too clingy.”
“That’s a shame. If a guy wants to get laid it’s better not to give a damn.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“But then not giving a damn defeats the purpose of the exercise, doesn’t it?” I was like this all night. Speaking in koans.
We wound up in Emma’s living room. She straddled Leslie, applying warming gel between my fiancée’s legs. In the dim light of the bedroom Leslie said to me: “I want to see you fuck her.” And I did. And Les watched, stroking my balls as I took out my frustrations on our playmate’s cunt. I turned into a raging hardon. I’d annihilated the self.
Later on Leslie told me: “You fuck like crazy when you’re angry.”
It’s a straightforward biological mechanism: anger produces testosterone, which in turn produces the aforementioned raging hardon. And the letter produced the anger. And the dream produced the letter. A deterministic universe, as logical as a clockwork orange.
The next morning Emma woke up late for work (the poor girl had to go in on a Saturday) in spite of my nudging and prodding. I discovered, much to my dismay, that I’d developed a rather profound kink in my neck. Leslie was kind enough to feed Emma’s cat, upon which Les and I said our goodbyes and strolled home in the sunlight. My Dinner with Andre had arrived in the mail, so she popped it in and we curled up on the couch together.
WALLY: And I mean, you know, it’s the same with any kind of prophecy or sign or an omen, because if you believe in omens, then that means that the universe—I mean, I don’t even know how to begin to describe this—that means that the future is somehow sending messages backwards to the present! Which means that the future must exist in some sense already in order to be able to send these messages. And it also means that things in the universe are there for a purpose: to give us messages. Whereas I think that things in the universe are just there. I mean, they don’t mean anything. I mean, you know, if the turtle’s egg falls out of the tree and splashes on the paving stones, it’s just because that turtle was clumsy, by accident. And to decide whether to send my ships off to war on the basis of that seems a big mistake to me.
ANDRE: Well, what information would you send your ships to war on? Because if it’s all meaningless, what’s the difference whether you accept the fortune cookie or the statistics of the Ford foundation? It doesn’t seem to matter.
Viewing the film (for the first time in twenty years) it occurred to me that the way you approach life depends very much on whether you identify with Andre the wide-eyed mystic or Wally the jaded realist. And though once I might have sided with Wally, at that moment I wasn’t sure what to think.
I wasn’t terribly thrilled about going out that night—aside from being brutally hungover, I obviously had a lot on my mind—but I didn’t want to cocoon at home either. Les and I met the date at a wine bar in the East Village and stayed just long enough for the fumes from the fryolator(!) to burn our eyes, sending us fleeing to the comfortably air-conditioned Niagara. Try as I might, I couldn’t work myself out of a fugue state. The girl seemed distant—mercurial was a word that kept coming to mind, although it might not have been the right word—yet I might just have been projecting a bad vibe. My neck was still stiff from the previous night. I felt as if I were being pulled under by the cosmic undertow.
Later on, at the warehouse party, I asked the girl whether she’d be interested in having carnal relations on a semi-regular basis (there ought to be a less juvenile and retarded term for this than ‘fuck buddy’). Ordinarily I’m not one for such formal proposals but that night I was hardly my usual charming self. The girl was intrigued. Later on I found Leslie dancing by herself and I held her for a moment before we took to the street to find a car. The girl joined us and as we rode back into Manhattan, fluff-talking about nothing in particular, I rested a hand upon each of their thighs.
A couple days later I was on the train and I thought Am I dreaming? I wanted to tap the guy standing next to me on the shoulder and ask him “Do you think any of this is real?” but he probably would have thought I was nuts. When Leslie got home from work we talked about Kant (we were in the same philosophy class back in school) and I felt a little better. Even if reality is an illusion, I reasoned, there must be some basis for the concepts we share as a species (e.g., that we inhabit three spatial dimensions plus time) and therefore our scientific intuitions about the nature of the universe need not be invalidated by occurrences we (as of today) lack the proper tools to understand. That is, unexplained occurrences don’t necessitate the existence of dragons and fairy-dust.
That evening I visited the park and found some smooth rocks to sit upon for a while. When I got up to leave I spied a book propped up against a tree trunk. “This is the Dream” read the book’s title. Not a dream but the dream. Whose dream? I wondered.
Because right now I’d just as soon forget about dreams altogether.
More: Threesome | Emma | Philosophy | Science | Mysticism | Film
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chris | Jul 19, 10:15 AM | #
on the topic of premonitions…
it’s really a question of big math. Or what some folks call the “law of truly large numbers” – it’s essentially the same thing that led Carl Jung to craft the idea of synchronicity – and boy do I love classic rock from the Police.
I would go into detail about it, but lets go right to the source…
http://skepdic.com/lawofnumbers.html
.c
Les | Jul 19, 07:11 PM | #
Lex, I think that book was meant for you. I really do believe it was the cosmos speaking to you.
Matt | Jul 20, 04:51 PM | #
I tend toward the hard science stuff, too, though it’s hard not to fall into the ever-present mythology of astrology, for instance, when embedded inside downtown social life. My dad once asked me to reconcile my ‘faith’ in astrology with my realism, and I said I didn’t. But he, too, is a hard scientist far more entrenched than me, so I asked him how he reconciled his “faith” in eastern medicine and mild indulgence of astrology.
...To which he explained his scientist’s skepticisim in contemporary science itself: Our entire scientific mythology, if you will, is built on Newton’s particle model and for the better part of the last century we’ve come to know that a wave model may potentially have equal power toward revelation. (For instance, the potential significance of gravity on human evolution ala astrology, at least as far as personality tendencies are concerned, save the forecasting.) Mix in the dimensional and frequency limitation of human senses and you may acknowledge the potential for real forces that cannot be tested according to Newton’s methods.
As for omens, our species does have a particularly overcompencatory tendency to find reasons for everything, but I don’t think of dreams or oracular visions as falling into this category. If you accept dad’s hypothesis, there’s a fair likelihood that mental illness and dream experience are evolutionarily developed ways of addressing forces beyond our limited dimensional perception. Viola: messages from the “future,” at least as we experience time.
Mind you, this is just a suggestion. Lex, you have to let us know how the book is and/or how it effects you.
Naked Condo | Jul 20, 06:13 PM | #
You need to check if you are living in a simulation.
Simulation Argument
nobody | Jul 24, 06:59 PM | #
any reality probably has to be treated as vital and urgent even if one has a hint or sense that it might be unreal…
...as well often we ascribe to the world around us some responsibility or role for our internal mental state… when in fact any ennui or dispassion or detachment may have been caused by reasons we did not perceive; and that we simply assume are due to unsettling observations or other causes.
Jordan | Jul 26, 05:40 PM | #
Matt, your dad’s “hypothesis” is a fallacy. The imperfectability of Western science (and the process of its historical self-improvement, like Copernicus revising Ptolemy or Einstein revising Newton) doesn’t suggest anything at all about astrology. Obviously we can’t rule out the possibility that something that is inherently empirically untestable, like astrology (or belief in God, or magic, or ESP, or whatever else) does in fact exist, but there is no positive evidence whatsoever to suggest it does. Whether or not there are things Western science can’t explain is entirely irrelevant to the question, since the superstitions you are talking about are fundamentally anti-empirical. You believe them or you don’t—science will never “catch up” to astrology and be able to explain it.
The entire point of science is that it is both falsifiable and grounded in empirical evidence. Astrology, like this belief that we are somehow biologically adapted to confront extradimensional forces in our dreams, is a belief system. It makes no claims to empirical fact, and so it makes no sense to believe that “skepticism of contemporary science,” however useful, has any bearing on the legitimacy of these superstitions.
Bill | Jul 28, 03:51 PM | #
“You must unlearn that which you have learned” Yoda, Empire Strikes Back.
matt | Jul 31, 12:38 AM | #
Jordan,
It seems to me you’re projecting a lot and misunderstanding the basics of what I suggest. I never said word one about the imperfectibility of science in my description, and though it is implied that I acknowledge it, I don’t give it significance in the fashionable post-modern sense. It is by no means the foundation of the proposition I put forward, mind you, hardly a ‘hypothesis.’ Please address any further correspondence to my personal email, if you’d like to discuss, instead of publically making me (and my dad for that matter) out to sound naive and foolish. Thanks,
Matt
jason | Aug 4, 11:32 AM | #
how far down the rabbit hole are you willing to go?
Gillette | Aug 5, 02:49 PM | #
Western society and the foundation for our scientific thought are built upon linear logic. There are other ways to think (circular or spiral being two of them) but linear thinking automatically discounts them because nonlinear does not follow the self defined and self imposed “authority” that the linear requires for its existence.
I have heard it said that a scientific “truth” is one that lasts more than three years.
And…I am continually hearing of and seeing science quantify and affirm the Truths that ancient mystics have been talking about for eons and that are contained in the ancient myths.
Fairy dust, mysticism and premonitory dreams are only magic because our science has not completely figured them out yet. We are scientific babies here. And because of that we might want to remember: just because science doesn’t yet have all the answers doesn’t mean something does not exist or should be discounted. They are just… a mystery. Not known, but not that esoteric when learned and understood.
I will continue to live in and embrace both worlds, watching science “prove” for the linear mind that which it cannot grasp as well as its nonlinear, circular cousin.
Plus..it’s just so fucking interesting.
Andrew | Aug 9, 06:01 AM | #
I have a small number of blogs bookmarked/favourites that I check everytime I log-on.
I’m finding myself CARING about the bloggers!
It’s irational and disturbing, and yet fascinating as to why. Nevertheless, Lex I notice you haven’t posted anything since this letter of which you speak arrived. Being the paranoid type I suspect it is the worst of news.
I hope I’m wrong.
Cheers from the other side of the world, and down a bit (well quite a bit, like Tasmania to be specific).
Andrew.
charles parr | Aug 13, 07:33 PM | #
I think the most important thing to remember is that prophecy is INHERENTLY self-fufilling.
There is nothing especially mystical about a prophetic event…even if you don’t accept any occult or paranormal causes, simple probability means such events are inevitable.
The key is that once a ‘prophecy’ has been noticed, it begins to exert influence onto you that quickly turn it from a random coincidence into a reality…So in this sense, such eventts truly are ‘real’, and quite powerful.
Funny old thing, life.
Camilla | Aug 16, 06:50 AM | #
I used to call my ‘fuck buddy’ my ‘friend.’ “Going to see my ‘friend’”, I would say. Everyone knew within an hour, I would be on all fours, taking him inside of me.
Zach | Aug 28, 10:10 PM | #
So, I can’t write it quite as eloquently as Andrew did, but I’ve also worried about you a bit. I hope whatever it was is something that you’ll be able to deal with.
Best of luck, man.
chris | Aug 30, 10:51 PM | #
L & L…
Has the mighty cosmo constant put you down for the count?
Your wit and flava’ are much missed in these parts.
Hoping all is well!
.c
Pirate Pete | Sep 6, 06:16 PM | #
Looks like you and your lovely lady have retired from this blog.
I wish you well in your endeavours.
It would be nice if you could make a short statement to say what it is that you are doing now, to close this off.
Best wishes,
Pirate Pete
Les | Sep 25, 07:50 PM | #
Dear Lovely Fans,
Not to worry. We have not retired. Far from it. We’ve only begun to live our sexy lives. Very soon you will learn all about our latest adventures…