The theorists were tired. It had been another long night of waiting, waiting in line somewhere along nine centuries of trying. The attempt was to solve the seemingly irreconcilable problem of The Holy Trinity. How could God be the Father and the Son and also the Holy Spirit? How can One be One and also more than One?? They asked.
The answers were made of perpetual negation. Every theorist that came up with a solution was promptly disproved by the next theorist, who in turn was disproved by the next and so it went on, and on. Yet on the small amplified platform in the short moment between negations, each theorist could express their idea and it would be accepted as Truth. And it felt good, it felt like God. They kept going.
As word spread and the line grew steadily longer, the waiting time increased so much that houses were built along the waiting line, and then convenience stores, grocery stores, pharmacy’s and hospitals were built along the waiting line. As time went on the theorists grew bored in the waiting, and ashamed, because there was also shame in the waiting. And so they built huge windowless waiting factories so that they would not be seen. Soon, more factories were built in order to organize to count and to document the waiting. And again more factories to form and to formalize the procedures and the laws of the waiting.
Law number one from the Book of The Laws of Waiting: Wait patiently until one is told to stop waiting.
The factories were rapidly running out of space and so new factories were built in order to document the running out of space, and to document the documentation of the running out of space. Countless factories were built, proliferating endlessly outwards through the earth and through the mountains and through the minds of the theorists who were busy waiting and negating and documenting and interpreting and translating and trying. Factories were built on top of rivers, factories were built on top of factories. Everything gained. Things gained with vigorous momentum more and more particularity which had the contrary effect of ambiguation – many of the theorists no longer remembered why they were even waiting. What am I waiting for? They asked. And why have I been waiting for so many hundreds of years? New lines formed.
Inside the factories, entire mythologies and ideologies were assembled and dissembled and reassembled using the now patented system, Perpetual Negation (PN) TM.
“Try it, you might like it!” The infomercial man speaks through the television and into the living room of Delight Johnson. Delight is busy with her tapestry, a real live time visual transcription of her life – stitching as it happens. She figured at a certain point that this was the closest she could possibly get to the indescribable longing that lived in the seat of her heart. She keeps going. Delight puts her needle down and stands back to admire her own handywork, lately she has been depicting the weeds which are growing so abundantly around her home that they cover almost entirely each window. Delights gardener Leon mysteriously stopped turning up 7 years ago, she guesses he went to join the long line of theorists but nobody knows. “Unstoppable” says Delight as she picks up her needle and begins to embroider an image of herself standing back and admiring her own handywork under a halo of dandelions.
“Have you ever wondered what you are doing here?” The infomercial man blasts into the home of Leon. Leon lost the key to his gate 7 years ago and has been trapped inside his home ever since. He had the gate made extra tall as he was advised to do so by the gate company who were advised to do so by the neighborhood Crime Watch company. The gate was way too high to climb and way too robust to dissemble and so Leon quite quickly stopped trying. What he failed to notice was that the walls surrounding the gate were relatively easy to climb, not too hard at all, but the gate was so mesmerizing, it continued to promise the possibility of freedom.