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

Village of Mind, Inhabitants 1

There are streets, avenues, cul de sacs even little gardens that populate the neurogenic pathways of the brain, Memories are the signposts. You arrive and depart from villages of sentiment. The self is established at the moment which is clearly marked. As brainy as you think you are, mind the speed limits when you come into town and the warnings not to loiter or expectorate. You will surely pay if you are guilty! Dreams are your secret life, full of infidelities amongst the transgressions the imagination conjures. 

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

Stoicism

The stoics Zeno and Epictetus had it right. Going nowhere fast is a good description of existence. So what’s with all the drag racing and the hair’s breadth weaving in and out of traffic on the LIE. LIE is the perfect acronym for Robert Moses’ masterwork which often looks more like a parking lot than a highway. How to undertake any endeavor amidst the seeming changeless of a world populated by the same fast food chains and cankerous strip malls? The tortoise in the famed parable has the right idea but in fact Achilles will literally win. The paradox of Zeno’s paradox is that it’s untrue. Death is another matter. Heidegger argued only those who were aware of death led an authentic existence. Of course, if you’re too aware of it, you give up. It’s like a seesaw. Realizing death lurks you have to choose life.

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

Hans Brinker

In Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates a boy puts his finger in the dike to prevent a flood. The tale is often used to illustrate the notion of trouble shooting problems before they get out of control. It also describes obsessive compulsive disorder. In this case the paradigm moves from management consulting to fantasy. Mumschsusen Syndrome by Proxy is a disorder whereby a parent treats a non-existing medical condition in a child. Prolepsis is when one answers a question that has yet to be asked  Anxiety is the common  denominator of all these pathologies. Are you someone who can’t get out if the house for fear it’s going to explode? Checkers posit a Groundhog Day of catastrophic thinking. It’s also comforting to have a reason for being and purpose, in this case getting the world under control.

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

Fatwa

It’s been a banner year for book burning with To Kill a Mockingbird, Beloved and Huckleberry Finn removed from the shelves. Salman Rushdie made the point on Fareed Zakaria's GPS. The famed author who was the subject of a fatwa for The Satanic Verses (1988) and who appeared on Fareed Zaharia’s GPS  with a dark lens covering his stabbed eye is, however, an equal opportunity employer “I disapprove of what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it," Zakaria and Rushie both said, quoting Voltaire, in chorus. To wit at the height of the #MeToo movement censorship and blacklisting were rampant. Big Brother is watching whether you’re looking right or left.

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