I am going to repeat myself. It is not only a consequence of being a man in his mid-60s who has said so much he is losing track, but it is also a reflection of the Zeitgeist, the Spirit of the Times, wherein indoctrination all over the belief spectrum involves repetition. Say something enough times and it becomes part of you. (Aldous Huxley described a process called “hypnopaedia” in his Brave New World, imagining that the World Controllers would have their citizens listen in their sleep to things the Controllers wanted their citizens to believe, like “Ending is better than mending” because it increases consumption and helps the economy thrive. But hey, if you search my blog posts for Huxley references you’ll find I’ve mentioned that already. I am repeating myself.)

I’ll also repeat a riff I made long ago, cheerfully ripping off Walt Whitman. He said something like “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.” Now, as long before, I say, “Do I repeat myself? Very well then, I repeat myself. I am redundant. I contain backup systems.”

I’m not EXACTLY repeating myself, though. Time is too precious for me to hunt down the original thing I said. And the flaw I found in my favorite book in the Bible, the Book of Ecclesiastes, is a slightly different flaw from the one I’m looking at now. The flaw, then as now, may be found in Ecclesiastes Chapter One, Verse Nine, which–surprise!–is about repetition. One translation: “All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again, there is nothing new under the sun.” The flaw I found long ago was in the last phrase, “there is nothing new under the sun.” The flaw is describing Earth and its repetitive travails as being UNDER the sun. We are NOT under the sun. We are OVER the sun. When we drop something into a well it goes DOWN into the well, not UP. And the Sun is at the bottom of our local gravity well.

The other flaw in Ecclesiastes 1:9 is that of COURSE there are new things. Humans did such a thorough job of changing the environmental mix that we now have much more strontium-90 in our skeletons than we did a hundred years ago, and all kinds of nasty stuff in our fat cells. Communication is now nearly instantaneous for almost all of us: I write this at 9:29 PM, Mountain Standard Time, on Tuesday, 25 May 2021. As quickly as five seconds after I post it I will probably see that someone, somewhere on Earth, has seen it. And that instant communication is changing the course of world history.

My triple acrostic is a repetition of the word “well.” But one of the delights of my native English language is that “well’ means many more than three things. My eyes well up just thinking about the possibilities. Also reminiscing: I once conceived a character named Aloe Vera Welling-Goode, which is a bad pun of “All very well and good.”

I’m slightly sorry that my image is too chaotic for the viewer to easily read the acrostic. My sorriness is alloyed by the delight that its chaoticism (is that a new word? sounds like Catechism, doesn’t it?) may be viewed (watch that definition there!) as a metaphor for four fir fore the way the Universe ACTUALLY is shaped, as opposed to the way it’s SUPPOSED to be shaped–symmetrically pristine–and smart-aleck scientists are still grappling with the Actual. (“Smart-aleck scientists” is not my actual view of scientists, but an echo of intellectual thuggery as can be found in alt-right propaganda. I repeat their view satirically.)

Here is a much easier to read version of the acrostic:

well well well

when the warp and weft of flow
elongate a startled doe
lenses singular/sensational
loose their bedlams gravitational

The words are easy to read, but what do they mean? By “warp and weft of flow” I meant that aspect of Space/Time we call Gravity, which knits the All together, and the Altogether, and the Alto–get her on YouTube; she’s fantastic! As for that poor doe, she has strayed too close to a Black Hole and its gravitational force is so different from her nose to her hindquarters that she is being stretched like taffy. Thank Goodness, and Wellness, that she doesn’t exist! As for Lenses, Singularities and Sensations, they all also relate to Gravity. And “bedlam” is contractual of both Bethlehem and Craziness.

I wish you well, Friends. I also wish you well. Well…