You know the things... the things...the consumables, the durables, the replaceables the buyables the haveables the yoursables the shopables... but more than that, the whole western things thing ... of skyscraping supersizing climbing piling extending growing quantities of ... things... of masses of... things... of rows and rows of... things ... of overreaching upreaching outreaching ... things... of hundred of millions of people all wanting things ...of numbers run rampant, of trillionfold microchips, of billionfold screens, of millionfold boxes ...of oceans of plenty ... of seas of much and lakes of lots ... of the whole neon-lit red-carpet things things, the entire runway-light banners-out flags-up we-are-talking-quantity-of things thing, the whole cabooodle the big kahuna enchilada ... the things thing ...of masses of things... of warehouses of masses of things ... of supersized warehouses of masses of things ... of nightlit grids of supersized warehouses of masses of things ... of nightlit grids of supersized warehouses of masses of things extending far far beyond sight ... of industrial and commercial zones extending beyond sight in nightlit grids of supersized warehouses ...of whole regional policies of industrial and commercial zones extending beyond sight in nightlit grids of supersized warehouses... of aerial maps of whole regions of industrial and commercial zones of nightlit grids... of a vast and varied patchworked continent of whole regions of night-light grids... of supersized warehouses ... of masses of things... of economic planloads of greater goods... of wharfloads of now unusable produce... surplus here... and lacking there, life-threateningly, life-shorteningly lacking, there just a 1000 miles south... of stacks of surplus, pools of surplus, lakes of surplus... of restocked flocks and restocked herds and refilled pens and freshly filled chickenhouses ... of freight train after freight train of refrigerated racks of ex-flocks and ex-herds and ex-chickens... of aerial maps of freight container upon freight container upon freight container in rows and lines and piles in a zone the size of a large city suburb ... of lots and lots of lots and lots of cars ... of lots of lots ... of whole bureaucratic bailiwicks of much ...of whole extended parishes of unpusilanimous unparsimony ... of the whole neon-lit red-carpet runway-light things thing, the big bastard banners-out flags-up marching-band parading-teenagers flying-baton pile’em-high-sell’em-short things thing ... of swiftly slick passages from one of a mass of mass-producing assembly-lines, onto one of a fleet of trucks, into one of a host of storage spaces, onto one of a few wharves, into one of a large fleet of vast ships, across an only ocean so vast, into one of a few ports so huge, onto oceanside wharves and bays on the near coasts of cross-continental transport systems feeding onto one of many roads or trains or freeways or highways into any one of a host of many cities and towns and shops and malls and depots and homes and offices and shops ... or of re-routed logjams eventually loaded at long-lapsing laggardly length onto giant container ships delayed and deferred in departure in transit in arriving in agreement in sale in file in filing system in computer program and left on ship on wharf in office in storage space in warehouse in depot in piles in stacks in racks in lots and moved once, and then again, but not for a while, and then again ... and restocked, and repackaged, and even rejigged ... and finally into a shop ... and back into depot or warehouse or storage space ... and maybe into further shops or depots or warehouses ... into eventual, or sudden, or already, desuetude... of colossally high numbers of crates boxes and containers logged and relogged and packed and unpacked and re-re-routed on into one of a host of storage spaces in one of a host of zones into one of a fleet of trucks into one of many depots towards one of many assembly lines making more ... things... many more things ... millions of things... yet more millions of things...and yesterday and today and tomorrow and sometimes less, sometimes more, but always many many things flowing out to the world... unstoppably... barely inexplicably ... out to the world and its people
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And the other day... whilst finally reading the last page of wikipedia ...Yes, for i have now read it all, every last page of wikipedia... I claim the prize ... A bad back and poor eyesight... i read that a great quantity of the universe is receding from us at a speed greater than the speed of light... which is the kind of line i need to read twice; a great quantity of the universe is receding from us at a speed greater than the speed of light... so that nothing about this large fraction of the universe can ever be known ...which, when you combine this with the fact that 90% of the universe is missing... you think... well, after you finish blaming the republican party... you think ... its all a bit beyond me... and its a bit beyond just about everyone... and if its a bit beyond just about everyone then its certainly beyond bloody me...so then, for sanity’s sake, i began the plummet through scale... out of the universal and the galactic and into the street the room the bus the conversation ... and the plummet through scale made extra sense because i’d recently been on the Tivoli gardens rides ... on that somewhat lesser ride which simply takes you vertically up a tall tower and drops you at something near terminal velocity from about 200 metres to about thirty whereupon you bounce back thirty feet or so and then bob up and down a bit before coming to a rest... so i’d been wondering about the plummet through scale... and the bob back up ... so I thought about the earth... seen in photos and felt in the curvature of the earth from an aeroplane... and i thought about the solar system... seen by me in the conventional image of smallish planets in concentric orbits on a flat plane around a huge sun... and i thought of the solar system... of my childish attempts to make sense of the size of the universe... well if it ends in a wall, what’s beyond the wall?... and if it is like a 3D sea around a centre, moving round in cycles merging and diverging, so that it comes back to itself ... then how can that be so?... and i thought about the ever-expanding universe from the big bang ... and i thought of new matter spontaneously exploding by some unknown process from the great quantity of dark matter no-one can apparently find ... and i thought of the endless depths of nothing... or of infinite quantities of solar systems like ours... and not like ours ... and thought of heat and matter in vast empty space... i thought of it extending forever, unknowable to us or anyone else... and i thought of how heat and cold and matter and emptiness were all different ends of their own scale... and that absolute zero might or might not be the lower end of the scale of heat and energy... and that there might be no upper end to the scale of size, and no lower end either... and i thought of fleas on the back of fleas on the back of fleas down to and beyond the size of an atom, an electron, a quark, a theoretical whatever... and how these scales ceased to be a useful way of thinking when one got further along them in either direction... and i thought of the busride from the airport into berlin ... of the tedious walk way down to the lakes ... of the deaf cat running round the other room... of the twenty hours on the plane to sydney... and of the chips in this computer... of the atoms in a page ... of the different elements ... of the atom of fluorine within the atom of chlorine, or of potassium within the sodium, and how this might be kind of true but was not a fruitful way to think, at least it wasn’t a way to think that i was taught... and i thought of the uncountable atoms in the sky, molecules in the table... and i went from the attempt to understand the whole of the universe, to the attempt to understand the nature of atoms... and i plummetted through the scales, refocussed my minds’ eye from superfar to supernear... and back ...and bobbed back up and again... through micro and macro... nano and googlo... yet time and time i came again to the universe as i experience it, now, here, in this room, outside on a walk, in a cafe, through a television ... and i thought how my mind wilfully bobbed up and down the scale of size, the scale of heat... and i thought further that i always came back, come back, to here, the room the city the person the human... and i thought how i had gone up high and scaled back down, and how i done this before, and before, and before... and that i could only ever come back to the human level... and i thought that perhaps here, at this level, i should stay
And the other day... whilst finally reading the last page of wikipedia ...Yes, for i have now read it all, every last page of wikipedia... I claim the prize ... A bad back and poor eyesight... i read that a great quantity of the universe is receding from us at a speed greater than the speed of light... which is the kind of line i need to read twice; a great quantity of the universe is receding from us at a speed greater than the speed of light... so that nothing about this large fraction of the universe can ever be known ...which, when you combine this with the fact that 90% of the universe is missing... you think... well, after you finish blaming the republican party... you think ... its all a bit beyond me... and its a bit beyond just about everyone... and if its a bit beyond just about everyone then its certainly beyond bloody me...so then, for sanity’s sake, i began the plummet through scale... out of the universal and the galactic and into the street the room the bus the conversation ... and the plummet through scale made extra sense because i’d recently been on the Tivoli gardens rides ... on that somewhat lesser ride which simply takes you vertically up a tall tower and drops you at something near terminal velocity from about 200 metres to about thirty whereupon you bounce back thirty feet or so and then bob up and down a bit before coming to a rest... so i’d been wondering about the plummet through scale... and the bob back up ... so I thought about the earth... seen in photos and felt in the curvature of the earth from an aeroplane... and i thought about the solar system... seen by me in the conventional image of smallish planets in concentric orbits on a flat plane around a huge sun... and i thought of the solar system... of my childish attempts to make sense of the size of the universe... well if it ends in a wall, what’s beyond the wall?... and if it is like a 3D sea around a centre, moving round in cycles merging and diverging, so that it comes back to itself ... then how can that be so?... and i thought about the ever-expanding universe from the big bang ... and i thought of new matter spontaneously exploding by some unknown process from the great quantity of dark matter no-one can apparently find ... and i thought of the endless depths of nothing... or of infinite quantities of solar systems like ours... and not like ours ... and thought of heat and matter in vast empty space... i thought of it extending forever, unknowable to us or anyone else... and i thought of how heat and cold and matter and emptiness were all different ends of their own scale... and that absolute zero might or might not be the lower end of the scale of heat and energy... and that there might be no upper end to the scale of size, and no lower end either... and i thought of fleas on the back of fleas on the back of fleas down to and beyond the size of an atom, an electron, a quark, a theoretical whatever... and how these scales ceased to be a useful way of thinking when one got further along them in either direction... and i thought of the busride from the airport into berlin ... of the tedious walk way down to the lakes ... of the deaf cat running round the other room... of the twenty hours on the plane to sydney... and of the chips in this computer... of the atoms in a page ... of the different elements ... of the atom of fluorine within the atom of chlorine, or of potassium within the sodium, and how this might be kind of true but was not a fruitful way to think, at least it wasn’t a way to think that i was taught... and i thought of the uncountable atoms in the sky, molecules in the table... and i went from the attempt to understand the whole of the universe, to the attempt to understand the nature of atoms... and i plummetted through the scales, refocussed my minds’ eye from superfar to supernear... and back ...and bobbed back up and again... through micro and macro... nano and googlo... yet time and time i came again to the universe as i experience it, now, here, in this room, outside on a walk, in a cafe, through a television ... and i thought how my mind wilfully bobbed up and down the scale of size, the scale of heat... and i thought further that i always came back, come back, to here, the room the city the person the human... and i thought how i had gone up high and scaled back down, and how i done this before, and before, and before... and that i could only ever come back to the human level... and i thought that perhaps here, at this level, i should stay
...
And then i simply stopped and looked about ... and a sense i had been aware of for months, years maybe, grew stronger, fuller, more unmistakable... and became even wordable ... giving me an altered reality ... the sudden changed reality of standing in the streets... looking at everything... wondering what human effort has gone into all this... of standing between the houses, amongst the cars, by the shops, simply looking at everything... but looking at it anew... with the now overwhelming sense of how much human effort it has taken for all this to be here ... something always known but never seen or sensed so clearly... a sense now new and awe-inspiring ... the great realisation of how many thousands of breakthroughs in the creation of everything there must have been simply to get it here... the level of sophistication in producing, manufacturing, just that safety pin, that paperclip, that dog collar, that cheap christmas light... how it must have taken thousands of people to conceive and make and modify and refine... at design level, manufacturer level, marketing level... to produce any one of these things ... that street name on a sign... that bicycle wheel ... that lettering on that bicycle wheel... that bright yellow in the lettering on that bicycle wheel... that metallic sparkle on the bright yellow lettering on that bicycle wheel... how much effort must have gone into the human creation of it all... and this before you even get to the science level, the level of what science breakthroughs made this possible... the sense, the surprisingly wondrous sense, the unusually wondrous sense, of standing there with a newly dawned awareness of how the slow gradual incremental input of human after human after human has made this, all this, any one of this... and how most of those humans are unknown, are of course of unknown, and unknowable ... and that for every alexander graham bell inventing the telephone there have been tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands, slowly conceiving inventing modifying adapting improving modifying every aspect of that mobile that turkish teenager is whispering into... and what relation if any does the working of that digital phone have to what Bell built?... and how many people have been involved in the journey towards just the computer chips in that mobile?... uncountable numbers ... towards simply deciding that silcon is best, and then producing the right silicon, the monocrystals, and how many were involved in getting to the point where silicon of this usable thin porous quality can be manufactured and used... and how many have been involved in the creation of a plastic of this quality of this application ... even more than the silicon?... and what of the tiny pieces of metal? ...how many centuries of methodical improvement... of refining the refining ...of tinkering... of hard graft and well-grounded inspiration?... so that the numbers involved must, in all, run into the millions?... mustn’t they?... how many metalsmiths ... how many geologists... how many biologists... how many production engineers ... how many physicists and chemists and biologists... ???????? ... uncountable unknowable numbers, as uncountable or unknowable as the stars... just to produce this... all this ... the amazing this... the thousands of years of effort simply to produce this ... and none of its been simple, none of it has come easy, more people will have failed than succeeded, will have been crushed by their efforts, will have been outdone by others, outfought outbought outgunned outhought by others... and yet the billions of uncountable incremental efforts in making all this happen makes you think what? ... what?... makes you think in awe... in admiration... so much graft and struggle and effort and sweat... so much commitment of mind and body in hour after day after month after year after decade ... makes you think, wow... what a species, what a classy bunch of fuckers, what a gang?... doncha love’em? ... doncha gorra love’em?... wow ... all of us forever on a road from there through here to somewhere, out of the caves and the fields to where, here... doncha gorra be amazed? ... i am
And then i simply stopped and looked about ... and a sense i had been aware of for months, years maybe, grew stronger, fuller, more unmistakable... and became even wordable ... giving me an altered reality ... the sudden changed reality of standing in the streets... looking at everything... wondering what human effort has gone into all this... of standing between the houses, amongst the cars, by the shops, simply looking at everything... but looking at it anew... with the now overwhelming sense of how much human effort it has taken for all this to be here ... something always known but never seen or sensed so clearly... a sense now new and awe-inspiring ... the great realisation of how many thousands of breakthroughs in the creation of everything there must have been simply to get it here... the level of sophistication in producing, manufacturing, just that safety pin, that paperclip, that dog collar, that cheap christmas light... how it must have taken thousands of people to conceive and make and modify and refine... at design level, manufacturer level, marketing level... to produce any one of these things ... that street name on a sign... that bicycle wheel ... that lettering on that bicycle wheel... that bright yellow in the lettering on that bicycle wheel... that metallic sparkle on the bright yellow lettering on that bicycle wheel... how much effort must have gone into the human creation of it all... and this before you even get to the science level, the level of what science breakthroughs made this possible... the sense, the surprisingly wondrous sense, the unusually wondrous sense, of standing there with a newly dawned awareness of how the slow gradual incremental input of human after human after human has made this, all this, any one of this... and how most of those humans are unknown, are of course of unknown, and unknowable ... and that for every alexander graham bell inventing the telephone there have been tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands, slowly conceiving inventing modifying adapting improving modifying every aspect of that mobile that turkish teenager is whispering into... and what relation if any does the working of that digital phone have to what Bell built?... and how many people have been involved in the journey towards just the computer chips in that mobile?... uncountable numbers ... towards simply deciding that silcon is best, and then producing the right silicon, the monocrystals, and how many were involved in getting to the point where silicon of this usable thin porous quality can be manufactured and used... and how many have been involved in the creation of a plastic of this quality of this application ... even more than the silicon?... and what of the tiny pieces of metal? ...how many centuries of methodical improvement... of refining the refining ...of tinkering... of hard graft and well-grounded inspiration?... so that the numbers involved must, in all, run into the millions?... mustn’t they?... how many metalsmiths ... how many geologists... how many biologists... how many production engineers ... how many physicists and chemists and biologists... ???????? ... uncountable unknowable numbers, as uncountable or unknowable as the stars... just to produce this... all this ... the amazing this... the thousands of years of effort simply to produce this ... and none of its been simple, none of it has come easy, more people will have failed than succeeded, will have been crushed by their efforts, will have been outdone by others, outfought outbought outgunned outhought by others... and yet the billions of uncountable incremental efforts in making all this happen makes you think what? ... what?... makes you think in awe... in admiration... so much graft and struggle and effort and sweat... so much commitment of mind and body in hour after day after month after year after decade ... makes you think, wow... what a species, what a classy bunch of fuckers, what a gang?... doncha love’em? ... doncha gorra love’em?... wow ... all of us forever on a road from there through here to somewhere, out of the caves and the fields to where, here... doncha gorra be amazed? ... i am
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