"Mildly Irritating" - An imaginary moment in a French Cafe

I was feeling nervous. Kept rubbing the side of my book. I clamped it tight in my palms and I walked in. 

I looked around, trying to hide the fact that I don't actually belong. One of the three cubicles by the window seemed free. I decided to make it the objective of my short march and made my way to it.

I cannot say whether I imagined it or this was actual fact, but we are in France so neither would surprise me (given the country's talent at making both imaginary and factual problems so much more real). It seemed like everyone was staring at me. Brown boy in a French Cafe. 

I sat down in the most confident way possible and put the book on the table. At least I have one aspect of my persona right, thought I as I looked at the book, briefly. A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze would have been my first pick. Since that would have been too cliched, I picked a historical work by M. T. Rankler titled 'Histories of the Western Hemispheres'; a vague but critically popular book. Naturally, I chose the French verion of this book, and that is it's translation. Highly recommended.

I digress. Back in the Cafe I am feeling relieved at the layer of thick smoke that hung in the air. This was 2004 so naturally I am in the natural den of a nicotine obsessed nation. The air smells like fresh, natural air should: full of tar, chemicals and, well, smoke. I took out a cigarette and lit it. I inhaled and exhaled the respite a cigarette brings in a hostile world.

"Bonjour, what can I get for you?" 

A mildly irritated, very attractive, waitress asked me (in French of course).

I looked to my left, where an old man was sipping on a glass of wine that seemed to be saying strange things to him. 

"Monsieur, is that any good?" 

I sheepishly asked him. 

He looked at me, also mildly irritated (a popular sentiment here, it would seem). He merely grunted.

"I'd like the same wine to keep me company please"

I said with a smile that, in retrospect, I think was altogether too wide. 

The waitress frowned and walked away. 

I suppose I found that mildly irritating. 

The myth develops

Phosphius was perplexed by two things in his 19th year; he had no symbols to describe Will. He also had no answer for the lack of change in the human condition. 

People suffered the same ailments and malaise they had seemed to do for generations. The advent of scientific solutions to daily problems did not entail an overall change in quality of life. Men and women had put up with heartache, mental slowness, the need to rest and the need to cry since his forefathers. He could tell, given the stories he had heard, the role of melancholy had been consistent in the history of man. 

Man had been fighting beast and monster, be it real or imagined, since his dawn. He had toiled and woken at sunlight for survival no matter the age and no matter its achievements. In times of great material growth, men had been afflicted with the same tragedy as in times of great physical hardship. What was the reason? Had the use of machinery not dulled the labours of the field? Had the screws and pipes not eased men and women into a life of physical well-being? Why was the mental state of all so gravely impacted by the sadness of things? 

The situation transcended the here and now, and therefore was central to what would become the representation of Objecta Arcaia. The inherent nature of all things. Living or dead, Phosphius reasoned, all objects around him were subject to some irrefutable laws. Some things, he argued, would never change. It was not the seasons or the arrival of the moon at night he alluded to. Phosphius was perplexed most by the core of all humanity which seemed, with consistency, to always depend on the same factors for it's happiness. 

All living things should be in a state of bliss. This was the conclusion of the age. Everywhere Phosphius looked, people were trying to make their lives better with the help of reason. Objects moved faster from one location to another and beasts, like birds, seemed to recede further. This was acceptable and necessary in his world. His citadels had been growing and his survival seemed more and more assured each step of the industrial way. Yet despite all the invention, there was a sense of calamity and panic in the lives of everyday citizenry. A chasm that seemed to have existed always. Forever. Not just till the birth of Man and Woman, but before that. An infinite line of collective consciousness that must be part of the structure of life. 

This connection, a common thread deep within the fabric of the living, meant all of life's essence must be in something all living creatures must share. A founding structure from which all of live must grow. Humans and birds and plants. All made from the same basic component. 

This component had 'travelled' across millennia to get to his time. It would have been unchanged; it would have the source of the restlessness of Man's soul. 

Towards the wall

Phosphius had understood that his symbol for bird represented both the individual birds, and the ultimate form of bird; yet they were not the same – there was the 'form' Bird, and the object bird. Thus his symbol was was for an Objecta Generica.

The Sun was also the only sun Phosphius would see (he reasoned, given the distance). Thus the sun was both form, and object, and was therefore an Objecta Singula.

There objects around him that seemed to possess no 'will' (force with which any part of the world around him could create action on it's own). He realized that form and object were only relevant for his own musings. On a day to day basis, all he needed was the symbol and he was able to communicate enough; he was able to carry out his daily tasks without difficulty.

It was the difficulty he had in expressing his thoughts on objects with will: he considered himself to be such an object, able to carry out action without external force. All of the living around him were, in his eyes, similar in nature. Some could make noises and speak even. Some, like him, had no speech but could move on their own, follow their own purpose.

Even though Objecta Generica was good enough for him to 'talk' about animals like horses, birds and rats, it would still not explain the unpredictable nature of the action the object might take. A horse could jump forward or kick backward, if startled. The form kick and jump were different objects each time; symbols could describe the form of the situation (reality) but not the objects seen as a whole. A collection of objects interacting with each other were in fact Objecta Generica, he concluded. A moment in time, events that happen, were both the form and the object of themselves. Each one, like the Sun even though it was merely a circular symbol, was increasingly difficult to render in symbolic representation.

People, those will-full objects like him, had even more variety in their unpredictability. They reacted to a very complex number of events. Phosphius assumed that despite not being able to draw Objecta Generica very well, in some cases at all, there was the knowledge in someone to draw all of them. Human behaviour had so many possible variations that for Phosphius (or another), it would be impossible to draw the entire set of possibilities.

Perplexed and fascinated by this new entity that he could never truly create a language for, Phosphius began to withdraw from human company. He realized that he was experiencing a phenomena he would need a new language for. 

This was both exciting and frightful. He had worked hard his entire youth to become a boy of talent with his drawings. He had made a connection with the mass of people around him, a connection he had thought not possible as a toddler. Yet now he had to re-invent, beyond simple drawings, the manner in which HE saw the world around him. He needed a language which would, one day, describe Objecta Arcaia.   

In the beginning

Before Phosphius was a man, it is said, he was a child. The child could not speak and only made sounds.
He had no means of communicating in the language understood by others; so he used symbols instead.

So, when he wanted to say 'bird', he would draw a bird. If he wanted water, he would make his sketch of a drop. For the sun he drew a circle, and so on.

Phosphius quickly learnt that there was a problem in the world around him. If he saw a bird, a black crow for example, he would draw a bird. If he saw a pigeon, he would draw the same symbol.

He had managed to express the word 'bird', but he had not managed to make a distinction between 'all birds' and 'that bird'. Were all birds representations of bird, the object? Or was the object merely an illusion that hinted that there were creatures that flew, had two wings, and looked somewhat the same, but were altogether different from a singular object of bird. Was there, somewhere, a perfect form of bird? A form that all birds were derived from?

The death of the bird was a way to better understand this; if a bird died, it was not the death of Bird, but the death of one bird. Each bird was different, but since he would never get to know them individually (birds not having the nature of man), they could be represented by one symbol, the Object. For birds, or water, devoid of speech as Phosphius was, there was a singular explanation of their character. They did not have individual traits and so he called this Objecta Genereca. There was a perfect form of bird, one that explained all birds. Even if he saw a bird he had never seen before, there were surely others like it (he learnt this from experience). Others had seen this bird die.

There was only one sun. Sun was therefore sun, suns and possessed the character of Object and Form. For a Object like the sun, of which he would only ever see one, Sun was both Object and its Form and represented all that was the nature of Sun.
Phosphius called this Objecta Singula.