Consciousness is chemical.

Knocking is Heard.

Here's a knocking indeed! 
If a man were porter of
hell-gate, he should have
old turning the key.

Knocking is Heard.

Knock,
knock, knock!  Who's there, i' the name of Beelzebub? Here's a farmer, that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty: come in time; have napkins enow about you; here you'll sweat for't.

Knocking is Heard.

Knock,
knock!  Who's there, in the other devil's name? Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, come in, equivocator.

Knocking is Heard.

Knock,
knock, knock!  Who's there? Faith, here's an English tailor come hither, for stealing out of a French hose: come in, tailor; here you may roast your goose.

Knocking is Heard.

Knock,
knock; never at quiet!  What are you? But this place is too cold for hell.  I'll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of all professions that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.

An idea knocks upon the door, and it is this: that consciousness is chemical.  Red flags wave, alarums ring when foreign ideas come by.  Or, conversely, the walls of your head are thick and the windows are shuttered.  And nobody notices when new ideas, like a thief in the night, come knocking, go begging, and find greener pastures quite outside your ken.  Or maybe not. Maybe the "Chemical Consciousness" is not an idea, but rather just a sound byte.  Maybe all of intellectual life is just . . . Marketing.  Or maybe it's an idea that's seen its day, the old lame idea, recycled?  Is this the problem?  Nobody notices the old friend, come round again to deliver the milk, the post, the gossip?  Have you thrown this one out too many times?  Are you wise to the fact that "Vagabond" means simply, "Uninvited"?

Perhaps you are a dullard.

Well, of course consciousness is chemical.  Of course.  Of course God is Dead.  Of course God is Love.  Of course Love is all there is.  Words are only as weighty as the force of gravity.  And out in space there is none of that.  Where are you?  Where, good reader, are you?

In other words, occasionally there is some cause to get on our hermeneutic suits (which are made of tin).  In other words, some trivial and obvious truth needs dispelled.

The force of gravity, here on earth, the force of gravity, is constant.  So constant, in fact, that we are rarely conscious of gravity.  It exists, like a lump of clay.  Like the earth earthing, clodded in the corner of the shed.  When do we ever notice gravity?  Exactly at the moments that gravity ACTS UPON US!  Movement.  Drunkenly smacking the pavement with my head, for one example.  Dizziness, when our old pal gravity has deserted us.  Dizziness when our head bounces twice or so on the sidewalk.  Bouncing is so sweetly algebraic.  Just a little dance with the constant pull of gravity, and the rubbery elastic nature of the skull.  But so long as we don't go rousing the force of gravity into acting upon us, working against our muscles and bones, why then, we just don't notice it.

The passage of time.  Again a constant.  Likewise a creature who acts upon us in violently noticeable ways.  Time is a chemical bath.  All the enzymes swim neuronically up and down the wide, slow river of time.

Temporary are we.  Temporary our walks upon the stage.  Temporary our jobs.  Life is rubbed shiny from the swish and ebb of time.  The moon stretches our time oblong.  She sucks ocean tides up and down the beach.  She sucks eddies on the banks.  She pulls gravitons into spindle shapes, and hovers nearby the earth in gravitational ambivalence.  This is time.  To notice it?  Eery high is a chemical high.  Some chemistry does not have chemical antecedent.  There's the rub.  the word, "Placebo" is not an innocuous word.  In fact, Placebo is the watchword of ignorance in the face of mystery.  Resist the categorical placebo.  Dig the temporary.

Logging in as Ed.

Last week's temp job (which actually started the week before) was quite cool. The entire downtown offices of a major consulting firm were moving out to Virginia, and my job was to fill in for a secretary who had moved, which meant covering phones and mail for her boss (who had also moved) and supporting two people who were still in the building.  Phone lines were forwarded.  Mail was forwarded.  So there wasn't much to cover for this lady's boss.  The two people who hadn't moved are part of a team which is auditing the World Bank, and they had offices over there.  One of them was in quite a bit, but he didn't want me answering his phones--he was a real voicemail addict.  So I sat there and did online bibliography-checking for my dissertation advisor (who is finishing a book, and who is -also- paying me by the hour).

No one really told me I had to leave that job.  On Friday the movers came and just took everything away.  They shut down the phones and took the computers.  (Fortunately, I had my laptop in my bag, so when they took one I just kept on clicking.) It was eerie--seven floors and no people.  I walked around and saw laptops just sitting there with no one looking after them.  You needed a key to get into all of these sections, but I of course had one, and the number of computers I could have walked out with was limited only by my carrying capacity (and have you ever -seen- my frame pack?!).  It was a mover who finally told me I had to leave--even Personnel had gone (although they signed my timesheet before they did).

Today I started a two-day stint at a law firm.  It's on a block I've walked down several times before, but I always thought it was just residences.  It's all (or almost all) row houses.  I actually stopped in front of the building and looked back and forth between the number over the door and the sheet of paper in my hand before taking it on faith that if I entered this building there would really -be- a 7th floor at the top of it.

The reason I couldn't see the 7th floor from the street is because the building starts going into broad terraces around floor 5 or 6, so the top of the building is like a pyramid.  I got off the elevator and found a completely empty reception area.  After about a minute of walking around and trying various locked doors in case I had come to the wrong place, a young man came out and asked who I was looking for.  I gave him the name of the woman who was my contact person, and he said, "Please make yourself comfortable.  I'll see if she's in."  I settled into one of the couches by the window.  Very shortly, a man's voice shouted from what must have been a long way down the hallway: "Is it Chad?"  Friendly, but loud.
       "It is," I replied, somewhat surprised that I could sound tentative at such high volume.
       "I'll be right with you, my good man.  Make yourself at home."
       "Okay."
       "Are you thirsty?"
       "No, I'm fine.  Thanks," I shouted.
       "If you're thirsty, go straight down the opposite hall, follow it as it veers to the right, take a right where it dead ends and go to the last door on the right at the end of that hallway.  There's coffee and a fridge with soda and things.  Help yourself."
       "Thanks."

After a few minutes of (very welcome) silence, Alexander J. Pires, Jr. came down the hall, introduced himself, and shook my hand.  He is almost exactly as tall as me, quite solidly built, with just an absolute shag of grey hair hanging all over his head.  Expensive shoes, expensive dress pants and white shirt, bow tie.  Senior partner of the firm.  He took me to his office, which is massive and walled almost completely by windows.  He has signed pictures of several bands, hanging on the wall, including the Dave Matthews Band.  His decor also includes cowboy boots and hats, an Indian rug, boxing gloves, and at least 12 framed diplomas, certificates, or awards.  Closer inspection revealed another stack of framed things leaning against the desk.  There was literally no room on the walls.

I spent most of the day typing his handwritten letters for him.  He knows absolutely nothing about computers.  It was a pleasant temp job in that he kept me busy all day long, but never made anything seem urgent.  He was clear in his instructions, friendly when I had to ask a question, and always grateful when I got something done.  Can't ask for much more than that.  He's also paying me for my hour-long lunch breaks.  That's not too common in Tempworld.

Still, it was strange.  The office is really two main hallways that branch off the reception area--both are the kinds of hallways which go about forty feet, veer off at 45 degrees or so, and then do that again.  Very disorienting.  And as far as I can tell, there were only about five other people in this office which look like it was made to hold about 100.  One was a girl who sat in the expensive leather chair in the other corner office--she was about 12 years old, wore her hair in two pony tails, and was dressed in a white T-shirt and bib-overalls shorts.  One was a little boy who could not have been older than 6.  He ran up and down the halls shooting people with a flashlight he was mistaking for a laser gun.  There was also Anu, my boss's other assistant, and Elaine, the office manager.  No one seemed to take any notice of the children all day long.

Towards the end of the day, I went down the long hall to get me one of those sodas, and when I entered the kitchen, the little boy was in there watching Sesame Street.  He watched me go to the fridge, and when I turned around with a Pepsi, he had this delighted expression of epiphany on his face.  Two minutes later, on my way to the photcopier, I saw him again, smirking at me knowingly over a can of Coke.  Two minutes after that the laser wars resumed.

One of the things Alex wanted me to type for him was a series of legal statements made by plaintiffs in one of his big cases.  When I asked Elaine where I could file these, she said told me open the folder "Favorites."  Okay.  Then a folder called "Marlene." Who's Marlene, I asked out of curiosity.  "She doesn't work her any more," was all she said.  "There," she said.  "Bottle.  It's filed under 'Bottle.'"  I was confused.  "How will I know these things in the future?"  "You won't," she said in a very friendly way.

Later on, Alex wanted me to print out some files which did not seem to be on my computer.  They must have been on the network somewhere, but no one knew where, so Alex was just going to have me type them in again.  Fortunately Anu called the people who had created the files and came and visited me with a list of where to find them.  They were all on hard drives on various terminals throughout the office.  "Okay, now this one...you go down this hallway, hang a right, go through the door--be sure it shuts--and there's a big window in there. Go to the computer by the window and look in 'My Documents'.  I believe that's on the C DRIVE."  [he said this the way you say the word "armadillo" to a four-year-old.] "And this one here...well, you go down the other hallway, and it's in the first computer you come to--but wait, you have to shut that computer down first and then turn it back on and log in as Ed."
       "Log in as Ed?"
       "That's right, Ed."
       "What's the password?"
       "We don't use any passwords around here."
Sure enough, Ed was the man with the file I needed.


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