Poetry For Dummies

Remember the old Cliff Notes which were more enjoyable than Shakespeare itself. You’d get the best lines and an easy to understand summary of the plot. Reading Shakespeare is almost as bad as having to go to a production of one of the plays. Now comes Poetry for Dummies. Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop are undoubtedly great but why try to figure out the conceits and double entendres in each line when someone can do it for you? Reading “Sailing to Byzantium” or “The Four Quartets” in the original is like traveling by buggy when you have a Tesla in the driveway. Louise Gluck, who won the Nobel, can be difficult, but help is coming along with “Howl” and “Coney Island of the Mind.” Is it heroic to read “The Rape of the Lock,” just because of the couplets. But let’s get back to “Howl” which will make you "laugh" after you read Poetry For Dummies. “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked/ dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix…” Great gag huh? Then there’s Larkin’s famous opener “They fuck you up your mum and dad…they fill you with the faults they had.” You react with a surprised “what ?’” Then you come to a modern masterpiece like Dorothea Lasky’s “Porn,” with the memorable “I just watched a woman fuck a hired hand.” If nothing else Poetry For Dummies will help you to navigate all the fucks. Don’t be a dummy and get caught with your pants down. There’s nothing worse than waxing poetic when you’ve got wax in your ears. 

Read "When a Stranger Doesn't Call" by Francis Levy, HuffPost 

and check out, "Got to Give It Up" by Marvin Gaye

The Magic White Castle

White Castle Building No. 8 (photo:Todd Murray)

The world is in state of flux. Like Dorothy you may find yourself landing back in Kansas, but will things ever be the same? One sign post, the kind of Tiresias of fast food joints founded in 1921 seems to have escaped history. The big McDonald’s M is iconic, but White Castle is a little like the Pyramids or the tomb of Hatshepsut. It stands on the precipice of eternity, toying with immortality.  Neither it's anachronistic turreted medieval architectural design nor its harsh Groundhog Day style lighting doesn't seem to matter. The sight of the beloved structure makes one want to cry out, "man the barricades." The whole message of the 377 White Castles is that the only change is constant. That’s the security and continuity the brand name conjures and like most fast food restaurants or the economy hotel chains like Holiday Inn Express which are modelled on them, White Castle sells the quantum notion that you can be everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Read "Diasporic Dining: The Running Footman" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and check out "Deserie" by The Charts (1957)

My Cravers Hall of Fame Story

I was kidnapped by terrorists on my way to the White Castle on  Bruckner Boulevard, where I was going to drop off my "Cravers Hall of Fame Story," with the contest deadline of September 30th looming. Though I didn’t become a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, it was a Patty Hearst kind of thing. My life up until then had been a long downhill slider. I was ready to rebel against The Colonel and reinvent myself. I was freed after negotiations with my wife, who insisted that my captors release me before dinner. I was deposited right in front of the familiar orange and white sign. I decided to reward myself with the Crave Clutch ($19.20, 20 sliders and 4 small fries). I had it coming to me after what I’d been through. I deserved it after all these years eating out of the bucket and being on the lam(b).

Read "Diasporic Dining: Fast Food, Inc." by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and while you're out it check this out before you hire Alexa, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IogtTA56Tog 

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?

You live with fear in a pandemic, primarily about the fact that you will catch the disease. In The Decameron Boccaccio writes about a group of Florentines who tell stories to each other as they recuse themselves to avoid the plague. Katherine Ann Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider creates an ominousness of biblical proportions in her tragic recounting of the Spanish flu of l918. Do you have it or not? It’s a little like the world of the McCarthy Hearings. Are You Now or Have You Ever Been? People are constantly taking their temperatures and monitoring the sniffling and tickle in their throats which they may not have thought twice about in normal times. If they hear a rumor justified or not, they immediately quarantine themselves or at least stay away from those who they think might have it. It’s a world of haunting isolation—followed by temporary relief.The brief respites with their rewards (the night on the town) are followed by new found causes for worry and concern. It's a dark tunnel with constant waiting for the light which feels like it's never going to come.

Read "MAGA and the Coronavirus" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and catch this great guitar riff from l971, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPVk-m1Pr4s

Knowledge For Dummies (Inter-Reactive Site)

Yankee Doodle (posted 12:14AM)

I have been trying to study the work of Martin Heidegger, which is supposed to be the mother of all phenomenology, but without much luck. I heard there's this business about "throwing," so I was timing my study period with the Yanks seasonal opener, but it didn’t help. When I was a sophomore I got a D on my SUZ paper (Sein und Zeit) and I got kicked out of Tau Epsilon for the semester, a stigma I've never recovered from. Now I’m overcompensating by reading Parfit's Reasons and Persons. What do you recommend?

Master

Bail! Pull the cord dude and you’ll get your golden parachute, if you get my drift. You’re locked in a parochial world, man. Outside of your frat brothers in Tau Epsilon, who cares about Heidegger? You should repeat the mantra I have no time for being or time, much less both.

Mirabelle Dictu (1:15)

We recently had a discussion over dinner about the fact that there were more casualties in the Civil War than in both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam. But what do you mean by casualties? 

Master

Huh?

Call Me Ishmael (12:14)

There is evidence that the Copernican theory is wrong and therefore a heresy and that the earth is the center of the so-called solar system. The dude who is promoting this also believes the earth is square and that the Holocaust is a myth. Still, I like to consider myself open- minded enough to entertain the views of people I don’t necessarily agree with.

Master

Dude, tolerance can be a beautiful thing. It can also mean extinction. If someone proposes a theory that you have no right to exist then you shouldn’t have any pangs of conscience when it comes to naysaying them. 

Feng Shui (2:15)

I don’t understand about the affair between Hannah Arendt and Marty Heidegger. It seemed to be over before it ever got off the ground.

Master

I wasn’t surprised. And then she went on to write Eichman in Jerusalem where she coined her “banality of evil,” which turned out to be one of the top ten sound bytes on the West Side of Manhattan.

Derrida like Clone (2:30)

Can you imagine if she’d married him. Hannah Heidegger? 

Master

Well if they were married today it would be Hannah Arendt Heidegger

Camus (2:15)

I want to talk about the Treaty of Westphalia (1648)

Master

You know what you want, Camus, but do you know what you need.

Stage Director from Our Town (3:00)

Remember Tim Hardin, the folk rock singer from the 60’s who was a heroin addict? Remember “Reason to Believe?”

Master

This is becoming an epistemic problem. Where do we start? How do we learn with the vast amount of knowledge that's available?

F.Scott (3:10)
In the dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning.

Master
I’m calling it a night. I want to go to 4Chan to see some porn and plays some new games.

Beckett (3:15) I’ll go on.

Read "Why Big German Words Like Vergangenbangenheit Carry Weight" By Francis Levy, HuffPost

The Myth of Sisyphus?

Do you feel like Sisyphus? Does the weight of life make it feel like you're wearing cement shoes? Viewers of the popular Netflix series Broadchurch will remember a recent episode when a woman's water breaks at the same moment that a suspected killer turns out to be on the loose.Technology makes life easier, but also renders it exponentially more complicated due to all the magic portals it inadvertently opens. Progress occasions enormous proliferations of data. The objects of humankind's creations are a runaway train. Social networking is a good example. A simple quip becomes viral resulting in a torrential response. You’ve heard about the person who wins the Mega Millions Powerball Lottery and then has to handle all the relatives and friends  calling in their chits. However good one’s intentions, it’s an axiom of human behavior that they're never enough. Generosity backfires when the recipient of one’s largesse is only reminded of how much more could have been forthcoming. In Hitchcock's Vertigo, a physical condition has spiritual underpinnings. It’s easy to lose balance and spin out of control when contingencies inundate with the fury of a storm.

Read "Vertigo and Fetishism" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

Dear CDC Administrator

 

Dear CDC Administrator:

I'm a polyamorous non-binary and recently sexually reassigned. I wish to be addressed as “thou.” You are I and I and Thou. I wish to know how Thou will react to the Stimulus. I am triggered by the title of the medieval play Everyman and just thinking about my question which is to ask: do I have to wear a mask and remain socially distant (and maintain a faraway or simply insouciant look) or just distanced, if I am in an ongoing open relationship with five partners or more? Also, can I use hydroxychloroquine on my dental dam after I have thoroughly sterilized my anal plug with bleach? I would would like to know the CDC guidelines if I am dealing with the issues stated above when I am approaching the event horizon of a black hole. I'm also a free-lance writer who would like to know the status of Thou (My) femdom submission which is on-going and which was placed in a SASE soon after my SRS surgery. Thou (Me) would appreciate your (Oy) attention to this matter. Now here are a few other questions that have crossed my mind in the light of the news conference in which CDC director Rochelle Walensky outlined the new guidelines. Hypothetical #1. Thou and Thou’s non-binary partner (who will be hitherto referred to as “sincerely yours”) have been attending a library “science” conference in Utica, relieved by the fact that we will again be using LCC (Library of Congress) or DDC (Dewey Decimal) classifications after a period in which I and Thou were told to swallow bleach. Now let’s say Thou (Me) and You (I) are both vaccinated, one with the Pfizer and the other with the Moderna. And let’s say we wish to practice polyamory with a person of indeterminate sexual identity or social position who’s also suffering from the Capgras Syndrome, the neurological disorder in which one believes that an imposter occupies the body of a familiar person. Thou may also suffer from prosopagnosia in which there’s an inability to distinguish one face from another which will further complicate your determination of who Thou wants to sleep with and whether a mask and social distance are necessary before Thou (Me) or I (You) practice safe sex. I hope I/m not being long-winded but I did have a couple of other questions which pertain to Bosons that were supposedly liberated in the LHC Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. Let’s say I’m a supernova and I don’t want to run the danger of being turned into just another cosmic sinkhole. Thou know what I’m talking about! Let’s say it’s 13.8 billion years ago and it’s the Big Bang and before that is just an ether and nothingness. There’s no cosmic real estate and no Kepler 452,1402 light years from earth. Now I’ve lost my chain of thought. What was I going to say? 

Read "MAGA and the Coronavirus" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

The Bump Stock Diaries

 animation (Phoenix7777)

Have you ever awakened in the middle of a conversation? Perhaps the person you’ve been talking with about banning bump stocks gets the idea you haven’t been listening. They may not realize that it’s more than either of you bargained for, as you were temporarily disengaged from your normal space/time coordinates. If that sounds eerie, it’s something that will increasingly occur with chinks in time and wormholes becoming a little like the unconscious—something which has always been present, but which has hitherto been out of the realm of awareness. On the other side of the fence, the next time you’re feeling someone is snubbing you, giving you the cold shoulder or getting that glazed look in their eyes, just as brilliant locutions effortlessly flow forth, it’s not because they undervalue you and are looking for someone they regard as more useful and important. Rest assured. They’re here because they're not all there. Or as Oscar Wilde once said, “it’s only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.” 

Read "The Wormhole Society" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

How to Clear the Mind

photo: Alejandro Linares Garcia

To stop thinking requires discipline. It might seem like sweets, sex or any of the items that are associated with pleasure. However, it’s grueling work and proof that the forces of dysphoria and euphoria are in a knock down drag out war—that isn’t mitigated by a  countervailing entropy. You’ve heard the plaintive whine of those longing for a so-called good time, particularly in these parlous times when the world is either drowning or burning up. If only they could place themselves under the palm in some Caribbean resort with gentle waves lapping up on the shore. What’s found on the cutting room floor of this particular travel ad, is the moment where the nagging old crone screams “where are you Charles, I’ve been looking all over for you” as the beautiful topless girl wipes herself off, picking up her copy of Der Stern, as she lays down on her settee sipping the daiquiri with the little umbrella that has just been served to her by one of the unctuously angry local natives who has a copy of Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth in their back pocket. At this very moment you realize you’ve picked up what are turning out to be painful second-degree burns. So much for “Club Hedonism!” Emptying the mind is similar to emptying the bowels. You don’t relax before a colonoscopy. You have to prep and get knocked out with Propofol. In order to be cleared of thoughts, the mind has to be dosed with a (verbal) diarrhetic before the skull is struck with the equivalent of a spiritual 2x4.

Read "It's Not a Rehearsal" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

This Market Needs an Adjustment

Dickens' Miss Havisham (Harry Furniss)

They say the market needs an adjustment when stock prices are inflated, Bravo if you just need to be tweaked or condolences if it’s l929 and you’re thinking of jumping out of the window. Usually, the solution is slightly more benign and you accept the fact that there are more profitable ways to spend your time. You don’t need to exhaust yourself, to pound ever more loudly on a door that’s not going to open. It would be funny if you had the wrong address all along, wouldn’t it? There are different types of fetishes or paraphilias. Some people are only attracted to those they can’t have. This is usually an affliction of adolescence, but remember Miss Havisham, the jilted lover, living in cobwebs, who never gets out of her wedding gown? What if Miss Havisham got a gun and joined a terrorist group that went after cads? It’s not only perseveration, but the very desire that creates the rage. The Miss Havishams of the world are always going for the wrong guy. That’s what makes Sammy run. Tragically it’s distorted perception that creates the dysphoria (Moliere's Misanthrope, Alceste, suffers from this malady). Tell that to someone who's out to politicize their unruly desires. 

Read "Happy Days" by Francis Levy, TheScreamingPope

Annals of Gerontology: Last Words

 Father Time With Baby New Year

Time doesn’t heal wounds. A “philosophical attitude” might seem to be the product of advanced years. In fact, you’ll likely be experiencing the same emotions the day you die as the day before and the day before that. The person who never paid attention to you, no matter what you did, will always be a thorn. The one on the other hand who demanded enormous amounts of attention and got it and who exhibited a gluttonous desire to live will continue to tempt you in the most invidious ways. When will you take the plunge? In one fell swoop you could tell them what you think, but you know you’re going to die without having the guts to hit the “reply” button on the computer-generated rejection slip. In your last moments on earth everything that has always bugged you will eat you alive. You will close your eyes and your heart will remain filled with contempt until its final beat. Alfred Jarry famously asked for a toothpick. What will your last words be?

Read Francis Levy's review of Obit., HuffPost

Please Complete This Survey About Your Recent Visit

German engineer surveying during WWI

Please complete this survey about your recent visit to Medical Associates. It will take 3 hours maximum and your answers will be electronically proctored to prevent cheating. Please note that the answers to this survey will not be read by anyone and will not have any effect on the care we provide.

 

Name (optional)

 

Sex: (please reply “non binary)

 

Please add further comments about the first two questions here:

 

The egg from which my DNA derives was in vitro fertilized. I was born on a social conferencing media. "Make it CRISPR" were what my father said when I was handed to him over Zoom. I am still not sure about my pronouns.

 

 

What time was your original appointment. Start with 12AM and enter a number up to ll:59PM. Draw a picture of a clock with three hands, one for hours and minutes and one which is supposed to swing faster for seconds. Be sure to make sure the second turns sixty times faster than the minute hand.

 

Now do this.

 

Please add any further comments:

 

“Excuse me. Hello, anyone there? I just realized that I won’t have time to finish this survey as I have yoga and then therapy. Shit! There never is any way to get heard. It’s like trying to interrupt Siri in the middle of one of her sentences.”

 

Was your doctor helpful in treating your problem. Please answer from 0  to 10 and don’t use fractions. We are not interested in hearing that your doctor was one sixteenth helpful. If they were one sixteenth helpful, please count that as 0. Anything over one half is one.

Fin

Read "Datafication Redux I" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

 

When We Dead Awaken

 character sketches When We Dead Awaken

  

Have you ever felt like Plato’s cave dweller who only sees shadows  on the wall? Imagine waking up one day and coming to the realization that you’ve got it all wrong. Your Reichian Orgone Box has been filled with Muzak. Most people are like a goose that’s being turned into fois gras; they’re force fed their lives, though unlike the goose, they don’t feel anything. It’s just the way the world is. Talk to lifers. Torture can become reality. You’ve heard of inmates who're loathe to return to civilian life for fear of the unknown. Can you imagine not wanting to give up a life that others might regard as torture? As far flung as the notion may sound, it’s a metaphor for the meanspirited existence many abused people (which is to say a good portion of humanity) lives. You're either the victim of the so-called pleasures of affluence or the victim of scarcity (which yes is worse). What both have in common is the delusion that either will go on forever. When We Dead Awaken is the title of the famous Ibsen play. 

Read "The Right to Life (Last Chapter)" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

Ubu enchaine

set design for Jarry's Ubu enchaine by Max Ernst 1937 (Artists Rights Society)

Most people die the way they’re born—like everyone else. Generally, unless you’re born at home with a doula or midwife, you emerge in a hospital where you’re first presented to your mother, who's happy and thrilled, unless she’s not. It’s hard to make generalizations but you’re likely to die in one of three places: in a hospital room, in your bed (if you die in your sleep) or on the way down from the Brooklyn or George Washington Bridge (if you jump). There will be a memorial. You might insist on being different, but unless you’re Little Richard, you’re going to have one of those pathetic services populated by a small crowd of people who would rather be anywhere else. Sorry, nothing you’ll be able to do about it. No way to control anyone once you're gone. Someone is likely to make a speech which will capture your particularity by being funny on a somber occasion. An anecdote about your eccentric behavior will undoubtedly be provided before the 10 or 12 attendees, who can’t avoid the delusion they will never die, finally repair to either therapy, yoga or their daily afternoon infidelity.

Read Evan Harris's review of Francis Levy's Tombstone: Not a Western, The East Hampton Star

Annals of Publishing: The Last New Yorker

Everything comes to an end. Rome, for example. Imagine the last edition of The New Yorker--which has got to happen. Sally Rooney's story, "Abnormal People," will deal with sad-masochistic sex among writers in an assisted living facility. There will be a long investigative piece by Ronan Farrow on how Mike Pompeo closed down the New York Public Library. Ezra Klein will offer his thoughts on "The Last Days of The New Yorker. Several pieces from the archive will celebrate the best of The New Yorker. Elizabeth Kolbert's piece about the extinction of the human species will be exhumed along with Jill Lepore’s "The New Babylonian Captivity" documenting the moving of The White House from Washington to a maxium security prison in an an undisclosed location. Bill McKibben on “The Sinking of Florida” and Adam Gopnik's “The Fate of Culture Without The New Yorker" will round out this section. "In Brief" reviews a previously unpublished Joyce Carol Oates novel about a tormented young woman growing up in Schenectady. The "Comment" will be a nostalgic reminiscence about The New Yorker from the regional director of the Internal Revenue Service. "The Talk of the Town" will include an interview with Frances Steloff, who ran the Gotham Book Mart before she died in 1989. "Shouts & Murmurs" will be a parody of the section entitled "What's So Funny?"

Read review of Mary South's You Will Never Be Forgotten by Francis Levy, TheScreamingPope

Dear Ethicist: What to Do About Guilt?

Dear Ethicist: I have written in before about feeling guilty. I know it sounds like I’m guilty about everything, but I have discovered in therapy that I have a lode of guilt that’s seeking to attach itself to some existential event. I know this sounds like I’m intellectualizing, but it’s actually an idea which derives from an understanding of elementary chemistry where elements bond to form compounds like C and O making Carbon Monoxide, which keeps the Carbon Monoxide monitor industry in business. Excuse me if I’m digressing.   Here is my trilemma in a nut shell. Do I cave into my guilt and simply avoid activities that make me feel guilty? Do I confront my guilt head on by doing precisely those things that make me feel guilty like bragging or showing off in the presence of poor pathetic schmucks who have spent their lives feeling envious of the rest of the world? Or do I figure that if I’m following the 10 Commandments everything else is gravy? In other words anything besides killing, coveting, holding the name of God in vain etc.

 

Guilt-Ridden, Manhattan 

 

 

Dear Guilt-Ridden, Is there such a thing as guilt? Probably yes. It's a  cross-cultural phenomenon. For instance, hypothetically there had to be a guilty Nazi. They may not have felt guilty about genocide. Instead these Nazis might have had compunctions about eating too many sweets. Kim Jong-un is another example. Does he feel guilty for murdering his uncle, Jang Song-thank or would his guilt be related to more intimate matters like failing to brush his teeth? As you can see I’m overthinking and will have to get back to you later.

Read "Is Guilt a Time-Bound Emotion?" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

 

 

 

Not Me!

Billy Whitelaw's mouth in Not I  (TheoryReader)

Beckett’s Not I is a talking mouth. Billy Whitelaw famously rendered the words flowing out of the disembodied orifice. With the world crumbling at an exponential rate, the salutary effects of such deconstruction may soon be realized. Why is the body necessary when consciousness can be stored and even produced by itinerant artificial intelligences? Who needs a body when you have words gushing forth, as if they’d taken on a life of their own, like an expeditionary force, free to explore in an unencumbered state? The present multi-morbidities are going to force the accommodation to ever changing platforms. Suddenly and without warning the present generation has become the beneficiary of the wanton indifference to danger signals, particularly on the environmental and biological fronts. If human kind begins to find their bodies uninhabitable, there's got to be a change of venue. Why is the torso, head, heart or lungs necessary for speech? Personality is usually considered to be the product of bodily processes, but what if the body can be retired, leaving its constituent parts to fend for themselves?

Read "E.D., The Erectile Dysfunctional" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

Bethlehem Journal: Wind Creek

photograph: Hallie Cohen

Bethlehem is a remnant of America’s industrial past and one of those old American towns that has both a pre and post-industrial life. Its abandoned factories and smokestacks are interspersed with neat stone cottages that emanate from the 18th century when Moravian immigrants founded a college (in 1742). When you travel to Vermont or Massachusetts, you find  deserted red brick hulks which have either been asylums (Wingdale in the Hudson Valley), shoe factories (now housing artisanal cheese shops) and even an occasional museum as in the case of Mass MoCA in North Adams. Bethlehem, Pa. is a particularly charming example of once dreary sweatshops and factories turned into alluring redoubts. Main Street is presided over by the auspicious Hotel Bethlehem built in l922. The brick streets are now lined with bistros;  the old Woolworth's now houses a Spanish restaurant. There's even a casino called Wind Creek, the ultimate in hi tech with its bold red sign hanging over the entrails of an abandoned steel mill. 

Read "Berkshire Journal: Pittsfield" by Francis Levy, TheScreamingPope

Wife or Default Credit Swapping?

Therapists and clerics, whether priests or other confessors are the repository of memory. In one sense they’re a little like financial instruments which when infused with a certain amount of capital, yield interest. And, of course, to extend the financial metaphor, there’s ultimately redemption, in which you get all your investment back and start all over again. In this way dealing with one’s emotions is a little like managing a portfolio. Both have ledgers which account for profit and loss and track actions for which there are consequences. Also, the similarity between a derivative and a mental health professional is that both can be retired. The parting of the ways comes when a confessor dies, taking with them essentially their patient’s life. Bondholders get their cash back, but the same equanimity is not always available to the patient.

Read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

An Open and Shut Case

Have you ever slammed a cabinet door after bumping your head? The door is not to blame, but you want to punish it. When someone head butts you it’s one thing but an inanimate object lacks intention. The only one you’re hurting is yourself, to the extent you may end up having to pay a carpenter to fix the door. Five out of six persons who get in your way are oblivious to you and sometimes themselves too. In this regard, they share the property of doors. That is the connotation of the word “knucklehead.” Caveat emptor, there are people who intentionally bump into you. Pickpockets make it seem like they're innocently colliding as you or they come through the subway turnstile. However, they’re using the opportunity to rifle through your pockets. It’s only after you’ve walked a few blocks and reach for your wallet, that you realize you’ve been had. "Doored" is  an expression that’s used by bikers who get sent flying. Though the act might not be intentional, from a legal point of view, the driver is liable.

Read "A-Z Quotes" by Francis Levy

Infinity Train

It looks like mankind is going to be taking off for other planets a little earlier than expected. Nature has wreaked its vengeance at an unexpectedly speedy rate. If you felt badly about future generations bearing the brunt of the death of the ozone layer, while at the same time saying something dismissive like “they’ll figure it out,” then you may find yourself brought up short. Production is likely to be stepped up on those little biospheres that were going to transport generations to the planets circling a Kepler star (approximately 1200 light years from earth). There will be an almost biblical feeling to the departure of mankind from earth something in between Moses making the waters part as he lead the Jews from slavery to the promised land and Noah—except just taking two cows, two chickens and so forth will not be enough to generate the necessary DNA. Imagine New York's forest of office towers reduced to squats with those refusing to make the journey a little like recalcitrant anti- vaxers refusing the cure. These refuseniks will be left an almost feudal civilization ruled by warlords who live with prophetic texts generated by QAnon shamans. A second coming will be on the horizon for those who remain behind while the crew of modernity sets sail, with the stars their destination.

Read "Is Consciousness Immortal?" by Francis Levy, HuffPost