Easy Travel to Other Planets

Zeno’s paradox proposes foreverness as a condition. Achilles never catches the tortoise, which is a good thing—he’s immortal. All that would be left to do, were he to attain his goal, is die. Seekers of the world rejoice! The romantic aging of the poet and dreamer are unfairly maligned! Easy travel to Other Planets is the title of an almost totally forgotten1981 novel, famous for its opening scene of sex between a woman and a dolphin and for its coining of the term "information sickness."

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star 

Fusion

photo: Asia Financial

If the Chinese succeed in cracking fusion, the world order will be changed. Once scarcity is no longer the issue, Saudi Arabia will truly become a third world country. It already rivals the Sudan in brutality as the hacking to death of the dissident journalist Jamal Khasgoggi demonstrates. Fusion will be the Ice Age for OPEC countries. Next is light. The closer to the speed of light one travels  the more time slows down—at least according to the notion of "time dilation" in relativity theory. When you return from some Kepler Star 1200 light years from earth, you will have out lived generations of your counterparts back on earth. 

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star 

Non-existence

You won't have to worry about spheres of influence or something as small as someone not doing what you want. You know how your mood can often depend on that action taken or not taken by someone else. Imagine in 1, 2, 5 or 10 years no longer being, no longer peering out at the world through your eyes, no longer having memories, expectations, hopes flowing through your head! Still despite all the advantages, non-being is a hard idea to swallow. Once you cross the line, there's no going back. One of the many salutary advantages of youth is to make one almost entirely immune to the notion of mortality. It's faint, distant and unbelievable. However, like a cold shower, the unavoidable imminence of the inexplicable lurks irremediably in everyone's future. Even a person who jumps out the window may entertain the notion of a soft landing, but somewhere along the way, they'll no longer be there to notice. 

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star. 

Fear and Trembling

There are three stages of being: reason, intuition and counter intuition which roughly correlate to Kierkegaard's esthetic, moral and religious categories. Kierkegaard, who could have been a great counterintelligence agent, illustrates the religious in Fear and Trembling where he addresses Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, an act which requires the ultimate leap of faith. Such an act can only be described as counterintuitive since no parent sacrifices their child. There are the exceptions you read about where mothers abandon their children. Of course scripture deals with that too in the story of Moses. Counter-intuition also resembles counterintelligence and hermaphroditism. In all of these you play both ends against the middle.

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star

Deaccessioning the Enlightenment

David Hume (1711-1776)

Erosion of the shoreline is a product of global warming, Coastlines shrink. The same might be said of the Humanist Project which began with Hume, Hobbes and Locke. It's not only Project 2025 and the threat to democracy but the whole notion of education. Rousseau’s Emile (1762) is a broadsheet for “Le Gai Savoir,” the joy of learning which Godard appropriated as the title of his 1969 film. The thrill of Goethe’s Faust is something you might find yourself experiencing in isolation, ditto any number of the classics which themselves depend on an inurement to literature. The great books whuch were once part of the core curriculum constitute a palette. Knowledge has always been a lonely pursuit with its satisfaction deriving from discussions on the way out of the carrel. With AI libraries and dictionaries, the repository of history and language have all been swept up in a maelstrom of data bytes.

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star

Trump

Stay tuned for Trump weather. Lonnie the Trump weatherman formerly known as Quinn. It’s Trump o’clock. Trump FEMA announced it is handing out 3 rolls of paper towels to every country hit by a hurricane. DHS secretary Christy Trump announced that not only immigrants will be detained indefinitely in their local Trump detention center. Trump Tower graces the avenue formerly known as Fifth and you may find yourself requiring a bar of Trump formerly known as soap."Trump," is the way most conversations will begin. "Two diamonds, three spades, three No Trump." Give Trump for Life, Trump Centers across the Trumpoverse. The Trump formerly known as moon. The Trump Way formerly known as Milky, both candy and star. Trumpty Dumpty had big fall. All the king's Trumps and all the Trump's men..."

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star

QED

Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995)

Why readers enjoy mysteries lies in resolution. The crime is solved, the villain apprehended. In real life, there often isn’t any resolution or if there is one, it occurs long after all the cast of characters have departed the earth. Are you the kind of person that likes everything to fit in place? Have you been accused of wanting everything tied up in a neat little bow, with the pieces of the puzzle fitting together too precociously for believability? Perhaps you want answers that are not within reach, not within the ken of the doctor, lawyer, financial consultant (no one can ever look into a crystal ball as far as markets are concerned) or scientist. About this latter, no heavenly body is asteroid proof. If you really want certainty, read a book!

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star

Cotard's

Jules Cotard (1840-1889)

Cotard’s Syndrome is a neurological condition where the victim suffers from the delusion they’re dead--"the delusion of negation" is another way this disorder is described. It’s the country cousin of Capgras where there's the haunting suspicion that a familiar persona is a guise for a imposter. Deep REM sleep can sometimes result in amnesia. Essentially you awaken on a profoundly wrong side of the bed, where you’re skating without blades so to speak. Temporary amnesia of this kind is akin to what a woman experiences, when she's left hobbling cause her heel’s fallen off. Their world falls apart unless they’re lucky enough to find a shoemaker.

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star

Antigone

How does one handle suffering? Numbness or rage are both symptoms of Grief. Antigone famously rages at Creon's refusal to allow her to bury her brother, Polyneices. You may have been praised for taking things well for complying and assuming that the losses, failures and disappointments you're experiencing are part of life. You can get used to almost anything, including, imprisonment, solitude, perhaps not death. If it's your demise, you won't have the luxury of the vote. One of the first casualties of mortality is expression. On D Day soldiers scaled the cliffs of Omaha beach. Such self-sacrifice is almost unimaginable within a universe where self-seeking is the lingua franca.

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star

Closely Watched Trains

The Orient Express is a legendary train that has since become a curiosity and whim indulged in by wealthy esthetes like the late William F. Buckley who famously recounted his travels ("Buckley Aboard The Orient Express, NYT, 11/22/81). If only he could have carried his harpsichord on board! Apparently during the purges Stalin removed whole populations to far off regions in Uzbekestan like Tashkent, by train. Needless to say such trains exhibited no luxuries. Notoriously Hitler’s box cars transported Jews to their deaths. E.M Frimbo was the alter ego of Roger E.M. Whitaker, The New Yorker's famed train traveler. Then there’s of course Freud who likened free-association to the perception of passing reality through a train car window.

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star

Punctuated Equilibrium

Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002)

In theory an enormous asteroid hit the earth precipitating the Ice Age which destroyed a reptilian civilization now preserved in the Museum of Natural History’s warren of dioramas. What exactly happened in the space of time in which pterodactyls became extinct? You see children’s animations of huge flying birds but there’s hardly ever a depiction of the evolutionary stages. Imagine Jared Diamond’s Collapse on a prehistoric level. Step back the next time you drive or fly into Gotham. It’s a surreal reticulated comic, requiring the kind of advanced graphics dependent on huge memory chips. Will Steven Jay Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium challenge Grand Theft Auto?

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star

Agnosia

Have you ever had the experience of not recognizing someone you knew long ago? And or of finding a once familiar face lost in flesh? You may have caught your own face reflected in a store window for a second, pausing at the sight of a stranger. You self-conception is at war with time. Capgras is a condition where the familiar facial receptacle is occupied by a stranger prosopagnosia is a complete loss of recognition. Chuck Close a portraitist, ironically, suffered from it. Don’t Google the face of that lost love who creates longing in your dreams. It’s gone forever.

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star

The Double

The rain forest is the epitome of life. In the winter flocks of geese fly south, along with the Monarchs who vacation in Mexico. The solitary soul exudes silence whose whisperings are the awakening from sleep. One is not to the exclusion of the other, since the mind starts to race when it's left to its own devices. Quietude begets is own discussions particularly with alter egos, dopplegangers and doubles. Dostoevsky's "The Double" is a famous short story in which the Titular Counselor Golyadkin, a genie pops out of the central character's inner life, a sidekick who grows to outdo and finally subjugate its master.  In "El otro," "the Other," Borges meets up with his younger self. "The Picture of Dorian Grey" presents a war between good and evil. There's no dearth of action where the local utility, imagination, is a work. It's one off the ways people survive in the absence of others. Prisoners and those who've become lost in darkness have lots of company.

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star

Guilt

On a quotidian level consider a situation where you feel  obligated to show up for a friend or family member when you would rather be at the high ticket event.You may have promised yourself to stop with the guilt already but failed again. Then you find out the party was a bust. No one showed up and those who did were the were the usual hangers on, who come for the free food and drinks. You didn’t miss a thing and your family were happy to see you!

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star

Hyperion

Dan Simmons' science fiction novel Hyperion about a group of space pilgrims is a homage to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Though the setting is different and more static—that of a group of nobles recusing themselves from the plague—Boccaccio’s Decameron is a similar idea. "Old wine in new bottles," is the analogy Strindberg uses in the preface to Miss Julie. In 10,000 years an earthling might engage in a quotidian activity albeit with a host of other forces at work. Chaucer’s would not have been able to envision a large metal bird (e.g. an Airbus 320) flying above his Pardoner. Baby boomers did not envision the internet anymore than Gen X did AI. What will be next?

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star

One Two Three...Infinity

10 minutes feels an hour until you become numb from the cold. Sprinters traffic in seconds and milliseconds. If a paramecium possessed consciousness it would recognize time in nanoseconds. Time is the question itself in the universe of subatomic particles. Quantum entanglement allows a particle to be in two places at the same time. The enormous magnets of the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva are capable of colliding particles at such a speed as to produce bosons, the materiel out if which all matter was created at the time of the Big Bang, 12.9 billion years ago. The light year a product of cosmology enables scientist to represent increasingly immense quantities of space/time. Kepler planets which spectrum analysis has shown to contain carbon are 1200 light years from earth. Due to "dark energy," the universe is continually expanding and in turn becoming more and more devoid of light as objects are separated from each other.

read The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy

and read The Wormhole Society: The Graphic Novel by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver

Raising Hell

Botticelli "The Map of Hell"

How to raise hell in hell? Hell is other people is the famed Sartre quote from No Exit. So you don't have to go any further than your the local diner where you have possibly gathered with friends as a break from holiday shopping, a hell all unto itself. Dante conjured 9 circles of hell, each with its own crimes and punishments. So you are not likely to run out of destinations. Just sin and your transgression will be sent on the way to its own fiery punishment. Maybe you just want to have a no strings attached good time, Erica Jong’s “zipless fuck.” Maybe you’d like to inhabit an episode of “Sex and the City.” Do you want to produce or revive pleasure? Maybe it’s a combination of both! Here you can both exorcise your demons “having a good time” while literally raising yourself up from your neighborhood underworld.

read The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy

and read The Wormhole Society: The Graphic Novel by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver

Embarrassment Redux

Embarrassment is not a malady or syndrome. It's an existential condition. Nearly everyone has had one of those dreams where you’re caught with your pants down either literally or metaphorically. In dream life it tends to be fairly literal eg you realize after it’s too late that you have only your underwear on at an oneiric social gathering. On a more global level, there's the subset of people who suffer from chronic embarrassment over their misspent lives. They’re fuck-ups. Shrinks more benignly allude to maladaptive behavior. You may know somebody like this. Maybe you’re one. Shame. You live in a state of pre-snubual bliss in your attempts to avoid those humiliating social situations in which someone may ask you what you do. Even worse, however, is indifference. You may find yourself lingering and trying to figure out what to do with your hands. The advent of devices like cellphones and androids has been a help since it makes you look too busy to be aware of the sniveling condescension of your “peers.” Shame can be a delicious vigorish to sexuality, but that's a subject for another day.

read The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy

and read The Wormhole Society: The Graphic Novel by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver

Regret

Regret is a form of time travel. If only you hadn’t decided to go to the gym that day you would never have met up with the lover or friend who has become such a bane--or had that fender bender in the parking lot. In fact, the expression "accident waiting to happen" expresses the notion of predestination, another way it’s put: everything is as it’s supposed to be of it would be different. Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism monetizes the aphorism. One’s class is therefore legitimized as a divine calling. You may marry your mother or father first time around, but what follows might as well as well be a factory part. Free will has little to do with what you do or who you choose to do it with.

read The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy

and read The Wormhole Society: The Graphic Novel by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver

Physical Control of the Mind

Tom Wolfe citing neurophysiologist Jose Delgado's Physical Control of the Mind in I Am Charlotte Simmons:  "His position was that the human mind, as we conceive it--and I think all of us do--bears very little resemblance to reality."  Delgado btw worked with an invention called the Stimoceiver, a brain wave stimulator attached to an EEG. Seance or sayance? From The Ants by Bert Holdabler and Edward O. Wilson: "Ants are everywhere, but only occasionally noticed. They run much of the terrestrial world as the premier soil turners, channelers of energy, dominatrices of the insect fauna--yet receive only passing  mention in textbooks on ecology. They employ the most complex forms of chemical communication of any animals and their social organization provides an illuminating contrast to that of human beings, but not one biologist in a hundred can describe the life cycle of any species."

read The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy

and read The Wormhole Society: The Graphic Novel by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver

Vanity

Shelley’s “Ozymandius” is the playlist for this marching band. There’s comfort in the notion of living as vanity. Once you're born you begin to die. Are you guilty of comparing and despairing? Do you compare your insides to other people's  outsides—even when that someone is no longer here? Parenthetically you may have wished to get the last word in, to get a reprieve which will allow you to ask or tell over the river of eternity, with its mythic rower, Charon. Today you wake up and feel almost relieved at the fall of an idol, but who knows? Tomorrow's another day.

read The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy

and read The Wormhole Society: The Graphic Novel by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver

Everything Everywhere All at Once

Do you find yourself spinning like dervish or top? How nice it would be if one could harness that centrifugal force. Imagine confusion and sensory overload as an enormous implacable turbine, a satellite generator in some back road, emitting its persistent hum. You enter reality at Times Square. Someone points you to that tunnel leading to the A . You think "great," until you begin to realize you’re not going to get there so fast. You stare at your phone suddenly realizing you didn’t allow  enough time  No sense turning back, but the platform is three deep and it had already started to rain when you ducked into the subway. You’ll never get a cab. To make matters worse, it just happens to be one of those meetings. They can do without you but you’d rather make your presence felt. Now make a paradigm shift. You’re a subatomic particle pulled by the huge magnets of the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva, on your way to becoming a boson whose fleeting existence will appear as a scratch. Movement creates kinetic energy is another way to look at it. You’re a fart, punching your way out of a paper bag and beginning to love it.

read "Double Exposure" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

read The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy

and read The Wormhole Society: The Graphic Novel by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver

Touchez pas aux grisbi

Jacques Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi (1954) which was recently revived at Film Forum is a gangster film--Tarantino reincarnated as a French director of the 50s. There are a succession of locations all either cafes, offices or bedrooms where gangsters hangout. The café has horrible dancing girls who wear pasties. Jean Gabin is Max, the lead gangster who is looking to have his uncle fence 50 million francs in gold bars. Rene Dary as Ricot is his pal. Jeanne Moreau plays Josy, the dancer who is leaving Riton. Above all the dancing girls are shots of other dancing girls in a state of undress, leading up to the Ricot's solemn deathbed scene in which there's full frontal nudity.Nothing really happens. One of the funniest scenes has Ricot and Max getting ready to go to bed, putting on their pajamas and brushing their teeth, with Ricot examining his chicken neck. One other element is the profusion of point of view shots, many of one group of gangsters or another driving and others of typically French winding staircases with an elevator rising to the top floor apartment of the local moll. The real source of the comedy is ultimately the fact that very little transpires. Waiting for Godot in French is En Attendant Godot. Touchez’s humor comes from turning its action genre on its head. What do gangsters do in between heists? 

read "Double Exposure" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

read The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy

and read The Wormhole Society: The Graphic Novel by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver