Picture yourself on a wide plane full of all things that are the case. Among other things, you will find a Buddha’s hand citron serving as a lucky charm; horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; a boat on a river; instruments for grinding chocolate; a flower vase with a bunch of poppies; a meteorite from the Chinese desert; a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; a glass of whiskey; an hourglass filled with Peruvian sand; a beautiful woman wearing a headscarf; a small box with a lid with the inscription “Duncan, A. H., Mr., The Society for Psychic Research, 1939”; a figure clad in cloth from under which only the face and one hand are visible, both of an uncanny bluish skin color; a clay hand serving as a teapot, green tea spilling from its fingertip; me; a hedgeapple; a lipstick-stained napkin; a wedge of chastity; a shell from the sea between Senegal and the Capverde Islands; not to mention soldiers with only one leg left, Coke bottles, neutered cats and all the rest.

Now all of this is laying out there in the sun. Imagine that it is flat (this is just a trick to make you understand). We are now in an area called “Flatlands”. People and things can shift, but only if they move around each other. They can’t reach out or step over each other. Now imagine a three-dimensional object traversing that plane. It would reach through, say, the flamingo area with one leg, the penguin area with the other. None of them could ever imagine that these two legs belong to a mighty body walking high above them. It might, for example, be a black swan the size of Scotland.

These legs could be described as bullet holes. The flat plane could be described as the world of Aleph. It’s what we see with one eye only. If you add several more eyes, make the pilgrimage to Real de Catorce or eat a Wub on your way back from Mars, you might be able to see the Betha world.

BUT- you’ll never be able to see the Gimel world. There not only all things that are thinkable exist, in however many dimensions, but also all the stuff that is impossible, hardly possible or highly possible. Each event that takes place combines space and time in an infinite number of possible combinations. It might be a solace to know that in the World of Gimel, the person you are in love with loves you back. But there is also one version in which this person is a fat pig that offers to be eaten. By the way – the word “pig” has a infinite number of meanings and is pronounced in an infinite number of different ways. If you catch the shadow of the World of Gimel you know that you will never die, but unfortunately this doesn’t really help in our World of Aleph.

Thank you:
Background: Jaro Straub, Real Morning (Quatorce), Mexico 2008
Text: Edwin Abbott Abbott, Jorge Luis Borges, Adam Budak, Sebastian Cichocki, Philip K. Dick, Marcel Duchamp, Momus, Amy Patton, Jim Skuldt, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michal Wolinski.