The Number 1.99999 Repeating

.774 - .852 - .753 - .747 - .776 - .705  

.725 - .784 - .757 - .725 - .679 - .799  

.740 - .735 - .751 - .789 - .724 - .713

 

01. We hadn’t been there ninety seconds, because it was right as we walked in the backyard of the high school graduation party that her cousin approached us and, without the slightest hesitation, asked my girlfriend right to her face---‘Did you bring my tupperware with you?’ It took perhaps longer than I care to confess to fully recognize what exactly it was she was referencing. 

Oh, the oxtail, I reflected, a second or so later, as I recalled there being a beautiful, wood-covered, piece of glass of tupperware sitting in our refrigerator for over a week, incubating an oxtail dish that had, unfortunately, totally expired---it was so far gone I was hesitant to even open the top of the tupperware container, despite the fact the top of the container was a beautiful, wood finished piece. There was no doubt in my mind that this oxtail was, at that point, not just completely expired but essentially a type of meat soup, a type of liquified corpse, which of course disgusted me severely. 

Cleaning it out struck me as a grotesque idea. 

I can’t say for certain, but it’s more likely than not that I threw it into the trash-tupperware, wood top, and oxtail. 

‘Oh, so sorry, I’ll definitely bring it back soon!’ she said, and I glanced at her and attempted to decipher if she had any idea the tupperware and the oxtail were both long gone, that both now sat in a garbage heap, a pile of trash somewhere, at the bottom of a public dump, still filled with decayed, grotesque oxtail, and that her cousin would never again own the privilege of placing her leftovers into that piece of tupperware with the beautiful wood cover. That tupperware was finished. 

Having said that, even the finest piece of tupperware---how precious is it really? Couldn’t we replace it for five dollars or less? My thinking at the time was yes, that the tupperware was entirely fungible, yet as soon as we stepped foot into this high school graduation party her cousin inquired about the tupperware---as if this tupperware perhaps belonged to some sort of rare species of tupperware, perhaps a species of tupperware on the verge of extinction, perhaps this was some kind of one-of-a-kind tupperware I nonchalantly tossed into a pile of trash. Some people have massive amounts of respect for tupperware, but I’ve never been one of them, it always eluded me why anyone would invest more than one dollar into a piece of tupperware, personally. To my mind, if a piece of tupperware, no matter the level of craftsmanship, is priced above one dollar, then it’s an overpriced piece of tupperware. It’s just not an item I’ve personally ever viewed as an investment of any kind. In my mind, plates and bowls are relatively worthwhile investments, while tupperware is essentially a capitalist ploy to increase the profit margin on plastic bags-to convince people they shouldn’t only invest in plates and bowls, but also invest in the highest quality plastic bags (tupperware), that in theory they’ll use again and again, but in practice they’ll lose incessantly and constantly have to replace. 

 

02. ‘She’s never getting that tupperware back,’ I said. 

‘You threw it in the trash?’ she said. 

‘You gave the okay?’ I said, to which she shook her head, clearly misremembering the plethora of times we’ve thrown out tupperware in the past, the countless times I’ve seen a piece of well-worn tupperware taking up space in our refrigerator, asked her if I could throw said tupperware out, received approval to throw said tupperware out, and thrown out said tupperware. 

‘It’s not a problem,’ I said, ‘we can probably just buy her a replacement or something.’ 

She agreed but seemed dubious, and I felt the same, I found myself agreeing with both myself and my girlfriend, despite the fact we had diametrically opposed views on this tupperware. My girlfriend and I disagreed on our ability to replace this tupperware, and I agreed with both of us. 

I sat in a lawn chair a second or so later, drinking a glass of Soju, explicitly attempting to avoid any unnecessary interaction at this high school graduation until I’d imbibed at least half this bottle of Soju, doubting my ability to come off appropriately cordial in a social setting sans a minimum of half of a bottle of this Soju ruthlessly percolating through my bloodstream. I sat there, contemplating high school graduations, contemplating my own high school graduation, recalling nothing of my high school graduation, contemplating the pervasive idiocy of organized education, considering how more or less every unique thinker---from Socrates stoned by the Athenians to Giordano Bruno burnt alive by the Catholic church to Nietzsche unread and in an insane asylum as he rotted away---yes, every unique thinker over the course of human history was either intensely ostracized or simply assassinated by the systematic educators of his or her day. 

In short, I was vociferously drinking this glass of Soju when I thought to myself---Isn’t it possible that we think of the theological philosophers as the conservatives, as the ones restrained by this so-called conception of God, yet it’s actually the case that the theological philosophers, over the course of human history, are the most audacious, the boldest philosophers we have and have ever had? How else can we explain Berkeley, I thought---easily the most radical skeptic the modern West has produced, yet also a Catholic priest? Dionysius, for example, was actually quite vigorous in his skepticism of our ability to know anything, his circumlocutions were actually quite radical. Whereas our typical secular atheist philosopher, while assured of our ability to know there are no Gods, is rather neutered in his philosophical speculations if the fact that God doesn’t exist is left to the side. Isn’t it possible that the so-called theological philosophers are the most audacious among us? The ones who are willing to take the properly radical leaps necessary when dealing with metaphysics, I thought while vociferously drinking this bottle of Soju, unwilling to speak to anyone at this high school graduation until I had thoroughly contemplated the true nature of the theological philosopher.

 

03. How else can we explain Kierkegaard? The secular philosophers talk our ears off and more often than not say nothing beyond what their thesis advisors demand to be printed, I thought, vociferously drinking this bottle of Soju, while the apex of the theological philosopher truly enacts the notion of philosophizing with a hammer? 

Yet, in our era, it seems we more or less dismiss all philosophers who choose to believe in God, I thought. 

Is it then possible, I thought, drinking my Soju, vociferously, that because the theological philosophers have been essentially shunned from the modern academy, that the mere mention of God is anathema to the modern academy, that because the theological philosopher has been holistically banned from partaking in the modern so-called academy, our modern organized educators, that they’ve therefore managed to maneuver outside of the stifling bureaucracy of the university---and actually engaged with original thought? Should we consider that possible? That they echo early Christian theologians, persecuted by pagan Roman authorities, who created elaborate frameworks that formed the sui generis metaphysical foundation of early Christian thought, a sui generis synthesis of the canonical Gospels with Neoplatonic thought, that our modern theologians, almost regardless of denomination, prosecuted by the atheist university bureaucrats, are working within perhaps similarly radical frameworks? After all, secular academic philosophers are loath to speculate on much of anything in our era. 

In their place we have theoretical physicists who employ complex mathematics to prove the susceptibility of complex mathematics to almost any type of sophistry. 

Frankly, I’ve never respected mathematicians, I should admit that much upfront. 

I suppose, in my own way, I’ve always viewed mathematicians as essentially charlatans. 

I view the art of mathematics as not only decadent, but I also view the concept of number as an essentially metaphysical domain. The mathematician’s formulas are always derivative of the numerical axioms of metaphysics---it’s always struck me as entirely possible that numbers are an impossibility. That the introduction of the decimal point, of the fraction, essentially sank mathematics right in its place, in my eyes at least. Of course, I’m at bottom a disciple of Palamas, for certain, I was inadvertently baptized as a disciple of Palamas, of course, I fundamentally disagree with this modern idea that we can comprehend everything in a purely intellectual fashion, this notion that there’s, in practice, no limit to the human intellect. I find that idea to be one of the most absolutely absurd. Sure, of course, we can read, say, Parmenides and, while it’s impressive, it’s also entirely absurd, and I personally enjoy it immensely, but on those merits. I’m not sure I’d base my scientific thought on it. I’m at least less than certain it’d become the cornerstone of my secular intellectual pursuits. 

Parmenides is one of the perfect works of absurdist fiction written in any language, and if we indeed made it a cornerstone of our secular intellectual pursuits, then at least we’d need to recognize our absurdist origins, as Dionysius rightfully does. Yet we’ve employed Parmenides for centuries as a fundamental commentary on allegedly rationalist notions. 

Allegedly rationalist notions---is this not what we find ourselves steeped in, more or less night and day? 

When I comment on metaphysics I do so in a consciously absurd fashion, because I recognize the limits of language, the limits of language that at bottom are incapable of communicating metaphysics in linear and/or rational fashions. It seems somewhat obvious that there’s a nefarious literalism at play here, I think it’s safe to say that. 

Ever since grade school I was positive that I stood in the presence of a nefarious literalism. 

Even as a young boy, instinctively, I knew numbers were, in all likelihood, impossibilities, and that my systematic education was highly susceptible to, if not entirely complicit in, a nefarious literalism. The education of my youth didn’t exactly encourage audacious thought. 

 

04. In any case, we can’t compose metaphysics in a rational sense, can we? Isn’t it always in a between-the-lines sense that we compose metaphysics, in winks and nods that we write metaphysics, because we can’t write metaphysics in a linear and/or rational fashion? We take far too much at face value. Our literalism is intentionally or unintentionally nefarious. Because the reality is nearly nothing can be taken at face value. Do you really believe the greatest minds of Antiquity intended to be taken at face value? 

The Byzantines read Plato the same way we read Dostoyevsky, whereas we read Plato the same way the Byzantines read the Gospels. Perhaps both are absurd. Now, sure, I’m without a doubt, from a certain vantage point at least, a disciple of Palamas, I won’t attempt to deny that, but we can’t take everything Palamas put to papyrus at face value either. Although Palamas understood the shortcomings of Antiquity better than even the most progressive modern scholar, I’d be the last one to say I take everything the saint wrote at face value, because I’m far from a literalist. 

The modern scholar, insofar as he keeps his faith in rationalism, will most likely never come to terms with the nature of Antiquity---is that fair to say? He’ll read Parmenides and take everything literally, and in taking everything literally he’ll inevitably take everything idiotically. 

Isn’t it the case that the theologians are the greatest skeptics among us? 

We view faith as poison as we retain fanatical levels of faith in our sensory organs. We peruse a variety of empirical studies that vivisect the grotesque fictions of our sensory organs-did you know it’s now speculated human beings didn’t see the color blue until the latter BC centuries at earliest? 

All around us our sensory organs excrete evidence of their utter unreliability, yet we view faith as idiocy while retaining this fanatical notion that our sensory organs can and should and must be trusted---which is why we’re not quite radical enough. 

The modern age retains radical faith in its sensory organs in a more fanatical fashion than any historical religion known to man. Nothing can be taken at face value, that much we should agree on, which brings me to this, a true fly in the ointment, so to speak---how is it you arrive at a postulation of an essence you cannot know? This is the question, is it not? How does the mathematician reach the postulation numbers are actual and distinct? 

How is it possible, given human capabilities, to distinguish the number two from the number one point nine repeating (1.9999999…) in practice? 

How is it possible to distinguish two from one point nine repeating? 

How does mathematics attempt to lay any claim to physical space-to attempt to claim the ability to leave the theoretical---when it’s impossible for us to distinguish the number two from the number one point nine repeating (1.9999999999999999999999...), in practice? 

It seems impossible for us to know that the number two is in fact the number two, and not the number one point nine repeating (1.9999999999999999…), and if we’re unable to know the number two is in fact the number two then how could it be possible to assert that mathematics has any value outside of the purely theoretical? 

By instinct perhaps we feel as though the number two is the number two, and the number one is the number one, yes, the mathematical axioms may feel correct, yet the fact remains that we lack the perceptual faculties to distinguish two apples from one point nine repeating (1.99999999999…) apples. When we speak of the Essence of all things we don’t speak any differently---with the exception that our philosophy of an unknowable Essence seeks to put a strict limit on knowledge based on instinctive assumptions, whereas the philosophy of mathematics attempts to indefinitely expand our knowledge based on nothing more than an instinctive assumption, the instinctive assumption that we can successfully distinguish two apples from one point nine repeating (1.999999999999…) apples. 

 

05. There’s no doubt that we’re in the midst of something essentially mysterious, that when we discuss the essence of life we think we can make sense of it all, that we’re on the precipice of making sense of ourselves and our surroundings, yet there’s still little doubt we remain in the midst of something essentially mysterious when we begin to think clearly. 

Thinking is perhaps the most mysterious act of all. 

Thinking, which we generally believe translates material and immaterial experience into language---into modes that are communicable. Thinking, which attempts to take something such as consuming a juicy pear, an experience that ultimately is confined to personal experience, and extrapolate it in a communicable format to the general populace. 

Sans thinking, consuming a juicy pear would be something confined to the private sphere-with thinking it’s then presumably allowed to enter the public domain. There is, in fact, no remaining public domain sans thinking, and there’s in essence no thinking sans a public domain. 

Assuming we consume a juicy pear, thinking Wow, this pear is juicy, but refuse to write it down, to verbally express it to our peers, then the thought Wow, this pear is juicy remains in the purely immaterial realm, it’s existence purely speculative, both the thought and the physical experience remain essentially purely speculative. It’s only when the thought Wow, this pear is juicy enters the public domain that it becomes, perhaps not real, but at least apparent in a more material manner---it’s verified as a real experience and subsequently verified as a real thought. I too consumed a pear, and wow it was also quite juicy! There’s no doubt we’re in the midst of something essentially mysterious here. 

 

06. It was just a few months ago, I dreamt an older female engaged me in a liaison, perhaps a sexual liaison---at first she was an older black woman, but then she became an older white woman, and, as she was white, as we sat in an automobile, I entered a hotel room to pay ninety two dollars for our room for the night, then I returned to the car. 

I was wearing a business suit and she wore business casual attire, there were two small dark, indecipherable forms sitting in the backseat, and she told me she had to go south of the Missouri now, and I replied You mean south of the Mississippi, right?---yet, even setting aside our geographical concerns, her statement struck me as something I already knew, that I knew she was leaving for good, and that her leaving would mark a new start for me, so to speak. 

When I woke up I felt as though, in an intensely odd and impalpable way, my entire life had followed the path of Eastern Orthodoxy---in a profound manner I felt this, I was wide awake in bed, gazing at a wall thinking my entire life has somehow tracked the tenets of the Eastern Orthodox, that this dream was equally corporeal to any waking experience I’ve had, and now, months later, I remain curious with regard to the identity of this multi-racial figure from my dream, who it seems engaged me in a sexual liaison? 

Despite affirming the mysterious nature of what we’re in the midst of, I’ve never been a believer in angels and demons, so to speak---yet this figure from my dream, it seems to me, shared many characteristics with historical reports of so-called angels and demons. Of course, assuming it’s one of the two, which one of the two is it? 

An angel or a demon? 

Who were the dark, nearly formless figures in the backseat of the car? A person engages me in a sexual liaison, but at first is black, but then becomes white, then tells me she now has to go quote-unquote south of the Missouri, I correct her, and then I wake up with an intense feeling my life’s somehow followed the tenets of Eastern Orthodoxy---then, this dream’s intensity sticking with me for weeks and even months on end, I question if the figure from my dream was perhaps a being of some metaphysical sort, perhaps an angel or perhaps a demon. I question whether perhaps an angel or perhaps a demon entered my dream to, in a quite serpentine way, point me in the direction of something---perhaps Eastern Orthodoxy. And I question if this is in fact possible. At almost any other time in my life I would have considered it an impossibility, something totally ludicrous, I’d have considered it an embarrassing absurdity to even suggest it. 

Whereas previously I would have sat and said I considered it to be an embarrassing absurdity and utter impossibility, now, for one reason or another, I actually consider it an embarrassing absurdity to find it utterly impossible. 

 

07. Yet let me explain my thoughts on this issue just a little further, if I may? Because my thoughts on the topic expanded significantly just recently, as a matter of fact. 

It was just last Saturday, at a backyard cookout where I sat at a nice enough glass table next to a bottle of potato vodka imported from Poland, I was drinking the potato vodka from Poland in a small plastic glass with water and ice, and the potato vodka was smooth, quite smooth actually, when the person sitting across from me made a remark---he said that he just bought half a dozen pre-rolled blunts from a state-sanctioned dispensary, that he was planning to step on the sidewalk and light up one of these blunts, have a puff or two to relax, to which he offered me a puff too, if I wanted one. 

Well, as it so happened, at the time, despite my general ambivalence to marijuana, I considered it a decent idea. I figured I’d have one puff or two, tops, that maybe it would relax me. I figured, at the time, that a puff or two, tops, would have a minimal to moderate effect, yet when I went out to the sidewalk with this person to take a puff or two from his state-sanctioned blunt I’d discover that this weed retained a potency that perhaps I’d never encountered before. 

 

08. The blunts were exquisitely rolled and tasted delicious, the first hit went down fine---yet as the blunt passed for a final time, against my better judgment, deep down acknowledging that the one hit was the correct amount of hits, that any subsequent hit would be a wholly superfluous hit, I decided to take a second hit, where immediately following my exhale I coughed vociferously. 

I coughed vociferously then just moments later time began, much to my surprise, proceeding in a highly abnormal manner. I found myself at a family cookout, and time was proceeding in a manner that struck me as entirely abnormal. I was lounging in a nondescript lawn chair, except now I found myself unable to experience the procession of time in our rudimentary, temperate manner. I jumped between disjointed scenes. People began speaking and it was almost as though a person hit fast forward on their speech. Then the speech would slow just momentarily. Additionally, I seemed entirely restricted from perceiving how people were perceiving me, I felt like I was extremely high, in fact I knew I was extremely high, and it wasn’t exactly the most appropriate venue to be that high---at a family cookout---yet I was restricted from perceiving how high I seemed to the outside world. 

At times it felt like I’d gained access to a cue that suggested everyone knew I was extremely high, yet this notion, that everyone knew I was extremely high, remained unproven, impossible to prove, it seemed. 

Because people would at times seem to be treating me as if I was hardly high at all, despite the fact that I could no longer experience time in a purely linear fashion. 

Essentially my own actions became entirely foreign to me---more than just being extremely high, I became disconcerted at the thought of what actions I could possibly be taking that caused the people around me to cease to view me as extremely high. 

 

09. The only actions of my own I was still aware of were actions that seemed to me to be of a person clearly extremely high, so how could these actions be seen by rational actors to be coming from a person who was still experiencing time linearly? 

This was, at the time, a question sans an answer. 

In short, it wasn’t simply that I ceased to experience time in a normative fashion---it was the fact my exterior surroundings seemed to continue to recognize I passed through time in at least somewhat of a normative fashion. This was disconcerting, because one would assume, if you left the confines of normative time, that the people in your vicinity would recognize this fact---that you exited normative time. But in this case it was almost as if, yes---I was no longer present, I was experiencing time in an entirely asynchronous fashion, yet my surroundings still found me to be there, for the most part. 

I was, to the best of my perceptual faculties, existing in at least two places at once. 

At the family cookout, where most people were either slightly high or not high at all, and then also in a separate iteration of time, where I was jumping from period to period, indiscriminately. 

There’s little doubt now that time, as we’re exposed to it, is only one of several iterations, yet how many iterations are there? 

It seems impossible for us to say---perhaps iterations is the wrong mode to discuss types of time. 

It’s entirely possible, in fact, that time perceives us inasmuch as we perceive it. 

Yet once we acknowledge this fact, that time has many iterations of producing itself, that time may in fact perceive us rather than us perceive it, then we can no longer blindly state that our dreams are just dreams, because it would seem to me that if time, in fact, takes many, if not infinite, iterations, then our dreams could in fact be entirely real, that they may just exist in different iterations of time. Our dreams could be entirely real experiences, just experienced in separate iterations of time. 

 

10. Of course, rationally speaking, not that we should speak rationally, but rationally speaking we could question the merits of adhering to Eastern Orthodoxy generally. Of course we could reference the case of Chrysostomos Kalafatis, the Metropolitan of Smyrna, who unceremoniously had his beard ripped off by hand, his eyes gouged out, his nose and ears cut off and was subsequently masqueraded around the very city where he acted as a Metropolitan until he died from his injuries, from having his eyes, nose, and ears removed, all of this during the height of the Greco-Turkish war---as it seems safe to say that Eastern Orthodoxy, to some extent, didn’t fare Chrysostomos well in the end, at least from a materialist point of view. 

It’s a small sample size yet it’s compelling to an extent, and of course the sample is substantially larger when we consider the plight of the Orthodox population of Anatolia as a whole. The truth is the Orthodox haven’t fared incredibly well in the Near East over the past, give or take, one thousand years or so, we could even say that following the path of Eastern Orthodoxy has perhaps been extremely fraught with peril in certain regions of the Eastern Mediterranean. 

We shouldn’t speak rationally or logically, yet if we were to take the case of, say, for example, the concept of The One, the being that conceptually precedes being, that exists in all aspects of time, but also fundamentally must exist outside of time, to a certain extent we would almost need to entirely reconstruct our conception of time to even remotely be able to conceive of a Being of that nature. Not to say that we could ever conceive a Being of that nature in its essence, yet to even approach a conception-if logic leads us to a First Principle that exists within and outside of time, then our conception of time is essentially absurdist. 

We would need to reconstruct this conception of time as something we exist exclusively within, that contains us in a linear fashion, that perhaps perceives us in a so-called linear fashion, because if we are in fact extensions of this One who must by necessity exist both within and outside of time, then there must exist a portion of us, as extensions of the One, that experiences time in this fashion, which is of course an essentially absurdist manner of conceiving of time. 

 

11. I can’t think of a thing more absurd than conceiving time in a solely linear fashion. 

It seems just---I don’t know-totally ridiculous to assume time proceeds in a purely linear fashion, that time wouldn’t proceed in whatever fashion it chooses, that time, eternal as it is, would need us to perceive it, as opposed to vice versa, or even to assume that time proceeds at all, that, if it chose to proceed, that it wouldn’t proceed in the fashion of, say, adding percentages as opposed to integers. 

I engaged in a sexual liaison with an older female, who at first was black, then became white, then informed me that she had to go south of the Missouri, after I’d paid ninety two dollars for a hotel room for the two of us, as we sat in the medium-sized sedan, with two small and formless dark beings sitting in the back. 

I partook in the smoking of a sizable blunt that a friend of mine purchased from a local dispensary, and after taking a mere two hits from this blunt I found myself inadvisably high at a family function, experiencing time in a spurious fashion, in a fashion where I was, on the one hand, apparently present at the party, yet simultaneously engaging passively in a form of time that wasn’t present at the party---so I suppose it to be possible that at the time I existed at two places at once. 

Yet as foolish as this may sound, we should note that even Dionysius said, and I quote, ‘it may be said to be praising God for his foolishness, which in itself seems absurd and strange, but this foolishness uplifts us to the ineffable truth which is there before all reasoning.’ Because it would stand to reason that if reason itself is incapable of ascertaining these so-called divine notions, then perhaps it’s only idiocy that remains capable of comprehending these historically divine notions, of time, of being, of placement, of First Causes. 

 

12. Perhaps what we need is a rigorous idiocy. It’s entirely possible, as I’m now thinking about it, that with regard to these notions we should employ nothing except a rigorous idiocy, that reason and sound logic have absolutely no place here, in the realm of metaphysics. That in order to wrap our minds around these ideas, like being in two places at once, of being both within and outside of time, of time being essentially non-linear as much as it’s essentially linear, of time perceiving us as much as we perceive it, that we must become more idiotic than we’ve ever been, that if we continue to attempt to pass ourselves off as intelligent---well, we’ll continue to flounder in the stochastic breezes that ripple around these concepts. 

Sans idiocy, these concepts will continue to exist in a shroud of mystery, not that they can ever be known fully, that’s unlikely, it’s more or less impossible, but if we employ the proper amount of idiocy, of rigorous idiocy, it’s possible that the mystery these concepts are shrouded in could be ameliorated to a degree. 

We conceptualize a First Cause, a One, a concept that may, in fact, be necessary for our species to exist, at least socially, it very well could be the case that we can only exist logically with this idea of First Cause or One preceding us. 

Otherwise, sans First Cause, sans a Beginning, we hardly have an argument for linear time, and if we’re deprived of a logical argument for linear time, then how can we make sense of anything? It’s impossible to make sense of anything, in the traditional sense, sans linear time. If time fails to proceed linearly, at least for us, if we’re hopping and skipping willy nilly in the fabric of time, in purely nonlinear manners, then nothing can make sense for us. We’re literally senseless. 

Sans a First Cause, we’re literally senseless. 

Time means nothing. Time, it seems to me, is something that one can only investigate idiotically. 

 

13. Or am I just being silly? Am I simply succumbing to a specific type of silliness, as I’m apt to do from time to time? Most, it should be noted, who know me know me to be prone to succumbing to silliness from time to time? Am I being melodramatic by extrapolating my intense impression following my waking up from my dream, am I melodramatically extrapolating that impression just a little too far by implying this female, who engaged me in a sexual liaison, might have been an angel or a demon? 

Yet on the other hand I should note this, it was actually quite some time ago, so long ago in fact that I was practically, now that I think of it, more or less an adolescent, despite being a fully grown man. 

At the time I was looking for apartments with my father---the first apartment I’d lease on my own, and we were downtown, the two of us, looking at an apartment I didn’t realize at the time was rent-controlled, meaning arbitrary caps were placed on the income of the tenants in order to retain eligibility, which of course was the reason why the apartments were such a great deal. 

Luckily enough for me my salary at that time was insufficient and paltry, so I still managed to qualify for the apartment despite the rent control requirements, had I waited the time necessary for one to become available, but, while I did add my name to the waitlist, I didn’t wait the time necessary, because I signed a lease on an apartment three miles north of downtown less than a week later. 

I was standing in a quarter-empty parking lot in an area of downtown where no less than half a dozen privately owned parking lots sat side by side by side, all with reasonable short-term rates. 

This particular area of downtown, at that point in time, was a fruitful area socially---there were a plethora of vibrant bars and restaurants, also side by side by side, that myself and others enjoyed frequenting, that were routinely packed from afternoon to evening. Now, by comparison, if you walk through that same area of downtown, by my count, more than half of those bars and restaurants are shut down for good. 

Whereas I used to frequent that part of downtown, hopping between two or three or four venues, having a fruitful experience socially---now it’s almost as if that area of downtown has aged right along with me. 

As my social activity has waned, at least with regard to hopping from bar to bar, the activity of this section of downtown has waned as well. 

As I’ve become less likely to pop out on a Wednesday afternoon to two or three or four places, this area of downtown has been unable to sustain businesses that used to thrive on people popping out on Wednesday afternoons, hopping from two or three or four places. 

 

14. There are, in fact, hardly any bars or restaurants that are still open on the block. There’s been a gargantuan For Lease sign on the largest venue for years now, and the places that should be open for business on a late weekday afternoon are no longer open for business on late weekday afternoons, whereas in previous years every bar and restaurant on the block would have been bustling with businessmen, eccentrics, and alcoholics, now these same venues don’t even open their doors until later at night, if at all. 

I’ve walked through that block multiple times hoping to pop into just one old bar or one old restaurant for just one drink, and I’ve discovered every single bar that’s stayed in business on that block closed to customers at that time. A bar in a business district really has no excuse for not being open by four pm on a weekday. 

It’s absurd for a bar in a business district to be closed for business at that time, yet that’s exactly what’s happened to this block, it’s now a dead block, it’s a block that’s more or less officially deceased socially. 

In any case, years ago, when I was looking for my first apartment with my dad, standing in a quarter-empty parking lot on this very block, I sent a text message to a younger girl I used to flirt with---although we never engaged in a sexual liaison, but there was perhaps a shared interest for a short period, perhaps we both came to the conclusion engaging in a sexual liaison, although tempting, was ill-advised, that for once in the course of human history people should refrain from engaging in any sort of ill-advised liaison, so we developed a friendship of sorts. 

It was a shallow friendship, as most friendships that result from staved off sexual liaisons tend to be, these are of course the most shallow and insipid friendships imaginable, they’re interminable and asinine, but this particular friendship was rewarding in its own way. 

So sure, around this time, in this parking lot, I sent her a text message to no reply, and I knew then, somehow or another, instinctually I suppose I knew that I wouldn’t get a reply, that the friendship had run its course, that it’s purely shallow and insipid nature was abundantly evident to the two of us, and that the other party, this younger girl, had taken it upon herself to sever the friendship once and for all. I’ve ceased to communicate with her since, yet despite the ultimately shallow and insipid nature of this friendship, despite the fact we never crossed the line, so to speak, for some reason I felt a sort of nonsensical deep hurt, a painful longing of sorts, rooted in essentially nothing, standing in that parking lot, knowing I’d never hear from this person again, who I had no physical relationship with and who I had an entirely shallow and insipid emotional relationship with. 

 

15. It wasn’t that long ago that I was reminded of this text message randomly---I’d nearly entirely removed this person from my memory, just as years prior she’d similarly removed me from her memory, and I felt an odd pang in my stomach as I recalled this text message. 

Wasn’t the entire point of turning away from engaging in these sexual liaisons to avoid such pangs? 

Don’t we all just inveterately assume that pangs in our stomachs almost exclusively result from sexual liaisons? 

And don’t we all then avoid sexual liaisons purely in attempts to avoid pangs in our stomachs? 

Yet in this case, a person I maturely avoided engaging with sexually, and vice versa, of course, who I instead developed a completely shallow and insipid friendship with, ended up causing me a pang in my stomach, all because I sent her a text message to no reply, knowing the ankle deep friendship we’d harbored had run its course and come to a conclusion. 

My point in all this is that the first objection the average person would raise to identifying the being in my dream as an angel would be the fact the two of us engaged in a sexual liaison, yet what I’ve just described suggests that perhaps there’s no difference in our relationships with people, that we can’t discriminate between relationships based on whether or not a sexual liaison occurred. 

That perhaps distinguishing relationships based on whether or not they feature a sexual exchange has been a gross error on our part. 

That perhaps we shouldn’t a priori assert that angels don’t engage in sexual liaisons with us. 

Because it’s entirely possible they do, and that there’s really nothing wrong with an angel engaging us in this type of liaison, sexually. 

 

16. So we can’t rule out entirely the possibility that this being---despite engaging me in a sexual liaison, in a small plethora of racial forms---was still, in fact, an angel pointing me toward the fact my life, in large part, followed the path of Eastern Orthodoxy. 

The mathematician, attempting to infinitely extrapolate the massive assumptions that are real world integers, is, in essence, a complete charlatan. 

For eons we’ve assumed sexual relations taint relationships, that once a sexual line is crossed, then the relationship will be irrevocably tainted, yet we’ve never considered that tainting can and will occur even sans sex. 

Yet perhaps we’re making too much of the alleged distinction between angels and demons as well. That just as perhaps we’ve made too much of the distinction between sexual and non-sexual relations, we’re now making too much of the distinction between angels and demons. 

It should be noted that even Dionysius noted that pure evil, if it were to exist, would immediately cease to exist, because everything that exists is derivative of the One, which is incapable of producing pure evil, and that even relative evil is simply a function of pursuing aims inappropriate to a being’s proper function, that even demons are only demonic in their distance from the One, not in a sense of representing pure evil, because were they to be pure evil they would cease to exist. 

Essentially, this view purports that there’s no fundamental distinction between an angel and a demon, just a difference in the appropriateness of their aims. Whereas an angel pursues the aims appropriate to it, in the proper proportion to its being, a demon pursues the aims more or less inappropriate to it, straying from its proper proportions. 

 

17. Now as it regards my dream, a being took multiple racial forms yet retained the same essence, much like our dual yet monist formulation, and then there were two dark and formless beings in the backseat---perhaps signifying the evil that’s impossible to exist, that is stripped of being as soon as it becomes so-called pure evil. 

So perhaps these two dark formless beings were the non-existent iterations of myself and my companion, possibly an angel. Now this being, perhaps an angel, or perhaps a demon, who took multiple racial forms, eventually informed me, in this car with the two small shapeless forms sitting in the backseat, that she had to go south of the Missouri, to which I corrected her: Don’t you mean south of the Mississippi? 

Yet we should now consider that perhaps my correction was, in the context of the dream, entirely incorrect. By employing the phrase South of the Missouri this being was perhaps directly implying that there are no neat distinctions---that duality is an illusion, that this idea that a state can be neatly divided by a Mississippi is a misguided approach, that this being, whether an angel or demon, in fact wouldn’t emerge on some other side precisely because there is no actual other side, there’s only a separate relative place. 

And when I woke up, I felt as though my life had always followed the path of Eastern Orthodoxy, but in this embrace I was accepting the non-dual nature of our existence inasmuch as I was accepting anything else. I embraced Eastern Orthodoxy after engaging in a sexual liaison with a being who took multiple racial forms, who left me to settle, not south of the Mississippi, but rather south of the Missouri---and opposite of the both of us were two small dark forms who completely lacked Being, signifying the impossibility of pure evil. 

My dream appropriately reproached this idea of true duality, of pure good and pure evil, replacing this absolute duality with a relative duality within the One, of which all Good and all Being originates, both in transcendence and immanence. 

I then reconciled myself with this being that went south of the Missouri---and perhaps this being wasn’t leaving me as much as guiding me, giving me hints not on where to go, no, she wasn’t saying where I should go or stay, she was instead guiding me on how to read a map. 

 

18. Even Dionysius stated outright, ‘One says of God, the cause of all good, that he is “inebriated”’---and with that in mind, against my better judgment, I poured myself a nice glass of vodka last Saturday before my girlfriend and I dined out, knowing all too well that we planned to go to the bar prior to our reservation, for a cocktail. 

My significant other agreed to act as our designated driver for the night, and I’d spent the entire week abstaining from every consumable item except water, coffee, hearty grains, and frozen vegetables, and I felt as though I deserved a nice, inebriated night. 

I said to myself You know what?---you’ve rigorously denied yourself pleasure this week, and you deserve a night where you go out and get white girl wasted. 

So I imbibed a cocktail before the cocktail, and when we arrived at the bar, waiting for our friends to meet us, we tried to prolong the cocktail and make a perfect segway into the dinner---unfortunately, I’d finished my cocktail first, and incorrectly assuming I had another ten to fifteen minutes before our friends arrived, so I ordered a second cocktail, yet as soon as the second cocktail arrived our friends also arrived, and then we were sat at the table where, needless to say, we immediately ordered a nice bottle of red wine. 

So rather than savoring my second cocktail at the bar and then beginning our bottle of wine, I was concurrently finishing my second cocktail while also starting our bottle of wine. Before I knew it I was thoroughly drunk, I became enthusiastically inebriated, and I felt as though I deserved it---I felt as though I deserved to be inebriated, to comment upon a small handful of topics that I probably should have remained silent about, to babble about and upon a potpourri of issues that perhaps would have been better left unaddressed. 

But sometimes it’s important to do things solely out of abundance, to become completely inebriated, to lose all touch with coherency and restraint, and to engage in a completely misguided conversation purely out of abundance. The First Cause, no matter what form we give it, no matter how its extensions may or may not communicate with us---is if nothing else superabundant.