# The Infinite Aleph _(Howell Creek Radio address for Dec 7, 2013 — )_ It's -35 F. If you walked the streets, you'd see rows of houses covered in snow, with people hiding out inside them. This is going to sound a little odd, but did you ever go for a walk and catch glimpses inside other people's houses? Or even just look at them, with the doors shut and the lights on inside. What if you walked up to that front door, and just...went in? There are lives going on inside every one of those houses, worlds and histories seperated by wood, drywall and doors, most of them probably unlocked. The barriers that keep us from stumbling into and trespassing on the lives of those around us are 1% physical and 99% mental. Anyways — back to the sidewalk for now. Probably better just keep walking before going too far down that mental route. But still it's interesting just to ponder while you walk: right now, at this very instant, seven billion people are living their lives in some way, and they cover only a small fraction of this planet's surface; what if you could get a glimpse of all of it at once? What if you could see everything? * * * Bill Watterson once drew a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip in which Calvin suddenly, literally begins to see the world from all sides — the scene itself looks like a neo-Cubist painting, with objects flattened and unfolded at weird angles. He exclaims, > It all started when Calvin engaged his dad in a minor debate! Soon Calvin could see both sides of the issue! Then poor Calvin began to see both sides of everything! The traditional single viewpoint has been abandoned! Perspective has been fractured! The multiple views provide too much information! It's impossible to move!" Calvin exerts himself and tries to eliminate all but one perspective. "It works! The world falls into recognizeable order!" The neo-Cubist effect drops away and objects in the scene look normal again. The strip ends with Calvin stopping by his father's desk to get the last word in that minor debate. "You're still wrong, Dad," he says. Bill Watterson commented in one of his books that the strip came from personal experience. In debates or arguments with others, he said, he is often paralyzed by being able to understand and even appreciate his opponent's viewpoint *too well*. I get the same thing myself, often: it makes debating productively really hard, because suddenly there doesn't seem to be any point to arguing anymore. When you can hold both sides of an argument perfectly in your mind, you just don't have any urge to push one side at the expense of the other; you just want to "hold" it, and contemplate it, like an optical illusion or a jewel, flipping back and forth between the perspectives. It's interesting that in his Calvin and Hobbes strip, Watterson depicts this as an upsetting and disorienting experience. To escape it, Calvin forces himself back into a more familiar mindset, which makes everything look normal again, but also returns Calvin to his normal, narrow-minded, wilfully ignorant self. "You're still wrong", quips the six year old to his dad. * * * This is from my ebook-in-progress, [*Noise of Creation*][noc]. > **0016. Similarity** > > You met Lucas in college and he was already nearly gone by then. At your first meeting you were passing each other in a long hallway; only, instead of swerving, he walked right into you without even flinching. He didn't apologize either — he just sat there looking stupid, as though he could never have seen you coming. You told him to watch where he was going; he only looked down and muttered that he was sorry in a persecuted sort of way. > > What did he mean, he was sorry? Couldn't he see where he was going? > > Yes, he could see where he was going; the only problem was that everything looked the same. No, listen: he could tell by your face that you didn't understand him. He really could see *everything*, not just for what it looked like but for what it _was._ > > A very great part of the observable matter in the universe is either hydrogen or oxygen, and coincidentally, most of your own body's mass is also either hydrogen or oxygen — the average percentages are very nearly identical, in fact: 75% each. The part of you that isn't water is mostly carbon and a little nitrogen, both of which are also among the most common elements in the universe. And things go on like that, down the list. > > So when you can see everything for what it *is* instead of only for how light bounces off of it, there is just too little difference between things to tell anything apart. It's the kind of insight that penetrates so deep that it seems hardly different than blindness. * * * *The Aleph* is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges in which a man gazes into a point in space and is suddenly able to see everything at once — and by everything, I mean *everything in the universe* from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping or confusion: > On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; It goes on like this: the narrator of the story continues with all these varied facets of sentences, each beginning with the words "I saw." Just this last March, a guy named David Hirmes decided to expand on this concept. He wrote code to search through all the digitized books in Project Gutenberg — a volunteer project that has created digital versions of over 42,000 classic, public domain works — and out of all that text he built a database of just the sentences that begin with the words "I saw." > I saw the loser creep after him, and lost sight of both in the dark. I saw all the roads filled with men who walked hither, and hastened themselves very much. I saw he must have some reason for answering me so abruptly. I saw a great many of them under the trees, which were of two kinds, some small, and others an inch long; but they were decayed. He then built a website called The Aleph. Every time you visit the Aleph, it serves up an endless stream of these sentences. > I saw one this morning, and he was frightened of the English. I saw no one, went nowhere, and scarce allowed myself sufficient time for my meals. I saw 'em and read 'em. I saw my mother approach M. I saw no body to these beings--nothing but the eyes. I saw you coming! she exclaimed, running down the steps to meet him. It's different every time you read it. You can also optionally include "I saw" sentences selected from Twitter, mixed in at random with the more literary ones. Reading this new, digital incarnation of The Aleph is one of the unique experiences of our time, not possible in any other age: you're not just reading the prepared prose of one author, you're seeing into the glittering, fractured pictures of dozens of moments written by thousands of authors throughout history, as well as things being seen by everyday, normal people, all over the world, _right now_. This online Aleph is about as near to a real Aleph as you are ever going to get. > I saw a couple kiss today and made a gagging face. I saw the old gentleman, eye-glasses on the tip of his nose, studying the bill of fare intently. I saw his face darken as she whispered in his ear. I saw a chameleon today; I guess it wasn't a very good chameleon. I saw in him a generous heart, and a genius capable of lofty actions which you would vainly have sought for in the marechal de Richelieu. I saw the unpeopled north grow into a land of homes, of farms, of mining-camps, where people lived and bred children. I saw what appeared to be a large, showy red raspberry growing by the roadside, but I did not find it at all tempting to the taste. I saw how good, how sweet she was, and something of the old love, the boy love, came back to me, as I held her in my arms, where she wished to be. I saw a beggar once in Holland — in the townlet of Enkhuisen. I saw you at the Spencer inquest, he said abruptly, applying a match to his cigar. I saw a commercial for baking potatoes in some kind of bag; now I'm craving a baked potato. I saw the messenger sent by him to call you to his assistance; you would have come too late. I saw the fellows on her tumble over one another, as we shot by, and I glanced anxiously to see if any had gone overboard. I saw he knew me. I saw a butterfly in hell today. I saw a horseman at some distance, obliquely behind me, at whose side a shell burst. I saw a post that was like "it doesnt matter how bad u do in finals or how good other people do we're all jobless after uni anyway" I saw girls of thirteen prostitutes, girls of fifteen with child. I saw it was with me, as it was with Joseph's brethren; the guilt of their own wickedness did often fill them with fears that their brother would at last despise them. I saw that she was possessed by one of her furies. I saw how admirably the sculptor had caught the poise of her head, the tender slope of the shoulder; then I crossed over and looked into her face — it was a frozen horror. I saw Father only yesterday. I saw a spider... So I froze in fear... * * * The power to see everything. It would be exhilarating at first; then disorienting, and perhaps even numbing. And yet, in some objective sense, this is closer to reality, closer to the sheer scale and variety of what's actually happening all the time. Everything you can imagine is happening right now, somewhere. But some small slice of that world is the time and place, and little clot of people you call home. Stay there. Stay there, and stay sane, and think every once in awhile about how small it is. * * * Thanks for listening to Howell Creek Radio. I'm Joel Dueck. As of Christmas 2014 you can still visit [David Hirmes' online Aleph][dhta], subtitle *Infinite Wonder, Infinite Pity*. The link is on the show notes on our website, and I hope it remains running forever. The musical dimension for this episode is by Z.D. Smith. You can listen and download it for free at his website, . This podcast was originally published at , where besides getting the aforementioned link you can read the transcript for each episode, and best of all, subscribe via iTunes, RSS or email, so that your computer or mobile device automatically picks up each sporadic episode as soon as it is beamed from our hidden, unlicensed station deep in the Superior National Forest of northern Minnesota. Follow us and get in touch on Facebook and on Twitter. Howell Creek Radio has no sponsors. The text of this podcast is released under the [Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution International license][ccai]. ## Synopsis Radio address for December 7, 2013: a glimpse into everything, everywhere, all at once.
Bill Watterson drew this strip about what it's like to suddenly see both sides of an argument. Mention is made of the living, breathing digital experience [*The Aleph: Infinite Wonder / Infinite Pity*][dhta] created by David Hirmes, and [the short story on which it is based][ajb]. There is also a reading of *0016. Similarity* from my in-progress ebook, [*Noise of Creation*][noc], which I promise is still in-progress. The musical dimension for this episode is by Z.D. Smith, who I met through his ideas and writings on [`ThoughtStreams.io`](https://thoughtstreams.io/zdsmith/). You can listen and download the music at his website, . [ajb]: http://www.phinnweb.org/links/literature/borges/aleph.html [dhta]: http://hirmes.com/aleph/ [noc]: http://leanpub.com/noiseofcreation [ccai]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en_US