Met History wrote:

> In a message dated 1/4/04 9:29:24 PM, [log in to unmask] writes:
>
>     2nd approach: If The Universe is governed by a collection of laws
>     agreed upon by scientists as 'natural', then the greatest living
>     cosmologist and natural scientist can act as Prime Mover (by proxy
>     for Mother Nature) by explaining everything.
>
> ...merely "explaining everything" is not the same as being the Prime
> Mover.  Writers often feel they have captured a subject by writing
> about it. Preservationists often feel they control a building because
> they have restored it (which is why the urge to restore is not far
> from the urge to demolish).

And there is the practice of writing that is specifically aimed towards
the recreation of a conscious being, or another practice towards
reverence of a divine entity, rather than being aimed towards
entertainment of a human audience. There is the book that when we find
it will change everything. There is the book that everything is written
in. And there is the blank book with no information whatsoever. The
Wizard of New Zealand I think is oriented to entertainment -- enough to
keep him fed and out of an institution. Reminds me of a soda pop bottle
thrown out of a plane window above the Kalahari Desert... only in this
case the bottle is the wizard's own imagination.

Interesting to consider the balance between preservation & demolition...
tell us more please.

> ...they had set the first-to-basement escalator in reverse (up), so
> that it met the second-to-first escalators at the same dead-end fire
> exit, a vestibule perhaps 5'x5'.  The unexpected sight of two
> escalators dead-ending in a confined space struck me as slightly
> hilarious, slightly menacing.

[Hitchcock menacing or 3 Stooges?]

> Then I noticed the popcorn.  The popcorn that people had spilled on
> the escalator.  It was trapped like seaweed along a rack line, rolling
> and tumbling on the disappearing treads against the final platform.
> The big fluffy ones bounced and popped, the hard little partly-popped
> ones hugged the surface. Some of then were gradually being chewed
> down.  Occasionally, fresh ones arrived. The line of popcorn moved
> back and forth, laterally, according to, apparently, chance.   Like
> snowflakes - and like people - each was different; I thought I saw
> life there.  I thought I saw God.

Elegant and amazing. Popcorn stories go well w/ the bubble gum. I wonder
what escalator designers think of popcorn? What kind of maintenance is
needed to replicate God? Truly amazing epiphany and memorable. I thank
you for sharing this.

> Those childbirth  coaching tapes, it annoyed me that they had music
> when the child was born; stupid, contrived, I thought.  When my
> children were born I heard the music.

I never saw the tapes. It was all in a room together sitting on the
floor lectures and holding and breathing. I was too involved to hear
music during the arrival.

I've been working on a parody of Jerzy Kosinki's /Being There, /the
novel behind Peter Seller's 1979 movie. My parody goes by the name of
/Not Quite There/ and instead of a simple minded character living in a
garden, begins with a much more simple minded, and deaf, character
living in a stone quarry that is going out of business. I was explaining
the plot premise of /Being There/ to 'the arrival' who arrived in
1980... the arrival got into the idea of a character growing up in a
sensory deprived condition and the need for a writer to write through
the character, trying to not deviate from what the character would know,
and the arrival, as so many arrivals will do, came up with the
independent idea of a young boy living his entire life in the hold of a
glass bottom house boat off the Eastern coast of New Zealand. Thus I was
researching the internet on the subject of glass bottom boats when I
came across the Wizard of New Zealand, and shared on BP. We are now at
the escalator following after another movie and looking at popcorn in
action.

Well, the /Glass Bottom House Boat/ goes something to the effect that
the boy has been fed his entire conscious life through a dumb waiter and
has come to believe that the dumb waiter is God. You get the idea, he
looks through glass geneath him and sees fish and squid and coral and
rays and on moonlit nights a dull glowing light. Not educated, not able
to read or write, not ever having had actual human contact... not even a
hug. The couple, the husband and wife, have been tooling around on the
house boat for several years waiting on the ransom... I forgot the
kidnapping... they have been waiting for the ransom that never arrives.
The wife is barren and wants a real family and she wants to free the boy
into the world. The husband, not a particularly nice guy and probably
likes his vodka a bit too much, insists that they should wait for the
ransom in case they have to return the boy. The couple has a fight and
the husband sends a hammer down the dumb waiter. He then jumps in a
speed boat and speeds away. We see him leaving in a hurry off into the
sunset with a great wake behind. The wife is crying. The boy is playing
with the hammer and he drops it. Water somes rushing up out of the
bottom of the boat. The boy is amazed, for a while, then the boat sinks
and he drowns.

][<en

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