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February 09, 2005
The Impossibility of Zoning (in Henrietta, NY)
Mortimer Shy’s
Address before the Town of Henrietta Zoning Board
Gentlemen. What I am about to say is something that either you are well aware of, or something you never heard of. That is, it will either shock you or amuse you, that you have known what is going on in this town for so long, being past able administrators of it, or you do not know what is going on in this town, to which I also say, Amen.
A few of you know me, as a man of modest intellectual achievements, and Msr. Lattimore and Fosquith, I thank you for the invitation to speak. For the others I know I shall appear as an upstart theorist, as what I have to say cannot be easily placed on the agenda of a group, only apparently commissioned to deal with zoning board applications. But this is the first most appropriate forum, for these revelations, and I am just looking you in the eyes, gentlemen, and discharging my own duty as a man of truth and local resident, though I must confess years ago I moved into the city of Rochester to a pleasant tree line street with sidewalks.
But the once rural town of Henrietta stands in crisis. You are on the threshold of hearing an idea which goes to the heart or our shared conceptions of the landscape, which, we all know, has seemed to have been in state of transformation. But which now, as I reveal the truth of it, stands before us for a clear decision on the future of reality itself. I said: THE FUTURE OF REALITY ITSELF, sirs.
And if you are ready, forget about your previous learning, imagine if you will yourselves as newly appointed philosophers, and feel the chill in the air . . . I am perhaps to aptly named, Mortimer Shy. Um . . .
We have all noticed, from the relative safety of our cars, how rapidly this suburban landscape has become filled up, with shopping malls and sprawing housing developments, medical facilities, sports emporiums, whatever could be brought in a flatbed truck it seems, etc, even as the original grid of roads has become impossible to navigate. We have in fact all waited for an end to rampant commercial expansion, and those of you on this Zoning Board have enacted seemingly heroic measures to stem the progress, contain the mess, balance the needs of growth and taxes and population, the whole boondagle (and that is a good word for it, gentlemen, boondagle!) of the varied needs of our expanding gluttenous society. But we haven’t really done anything but pallatiate and cater to varying factions, our small mission has seemed only to be to listen to petitions and make political decisions that would now usher in a greater good, and then again perhaps mitigate against a growing feeling that we were losing the very look and history of the town called, perhaps fatuously, Henrietta!
But we have never REALLY understood what was happening. Or maybe some of us have, and are here about to be exposed to their neighbors! For as I said at the beginning, some of you may have known for years about the miraculous nature or this geography, and special secret I am about to reveal.
Nicholas Eckhart, a recently certified Land Surveyor, claims to have proven what many people have long suspected about the terrain in the town of Henrietta. As over the years the town has experienced a seemingly geometrical discovery of more and more internal space, resulting in tenfold commerical development, beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. “Or nightmares,“ reflects the gangly six foot nine land surveyor, and I quote: “It appears that the town must make a decision as to how much growth it wants; for the peculiar properties of its terrain actually allow for what looks like infinite growth.”
“The peculiar properties of its terrain!” he says, and gentlemen I shall produce Mr. Eckhart at the very next meeting of this Board. It is best now to just try to comprehend the discovery, for he did not invent this. And neither is Mortimer Shy insane, as Msr Lattimore and Mosquite are ready to attest, but I am a man of modest intellectual achievements, as I said. Who lives on a city street, yes, and walks up the pub at the corner where he may discuss his wacky thoughts, yes--but!
What Eckhart has proven, and what his friend Phillip Williams is claiming he can also demonstrate mathematically , is that the terrain opens up a parcel of land, an interior space, of indeterminate size, on one side of any given square, or rather quadrangle being developed. This it does, making new land available simply for the taking, at least one consecutive space of even greater size; unless of course a competing grid, from another direction, intercepts it. This means there is actually limitless space within the town of Henrietta, as long as one can discover which side of the square, or rather quadrangle, is the one yielding a new interior terrain. And if one plans carefully enough, spies which direction to build in and puts up major installations that will keeping feeding, as it will, the monstrous new reality.
Eckhard says that he had a hunch, or rather an intuition, that it would be the shortest side of any developed quadrangle shaped piece of land that would open up a new interior land mass. That is where one would set up the surveying equipment and chart out a kind of free zone. And, alarmingly, a developer could just go ahead and build whatever they want there, since this area isn’t going to show up on any map! And he doesn't have to appear in front of any Zoning Boards, either.
But all is going to be available for shoppers, and patients coming and going from the new medical facilities that have mushroomed around here, and people can locate these regions, or remember how to follow the signs once they are inside the new geography. And it appears this kind of development has already been going on for some years; so somebody knows all about this. Eckhart and myself, possibility accompanied by John J. McCarthy, the former news reporter and helicopter pilot who has recently accomplished another alarming study of traffic flow in the Rochester region, we all are going to do some aeriel photography--but come to think of it, that might not reveal anything but the old farmhouses . . .
Naturally, other towns in the area are interested in knowing whether this same super-infinity is available within their borders. I doubt it. I think this is just Henrietta's problem, though it might be leaking into Brighton. Previous assumptions used by land surveyors, map makers, and bicycle riders, were that undeveloped land was finite, and of course eventually Henrietta would be filled up, unless parts were declared to be “open space.” A now most quaint nomenclature indeed.
Posted by mortimer at 07:28 PM | Comments (2042)
February 01, 2005
#3 Redefining the Role of the Family Doctor
Mortimer Shy’s Address before:
The Committee to Redefine the Role of the Family Doctor (CRRFD)
Gentlemen. Try not to be alarmed by the following modest revolutionary suggestions, on a subject I am sure you are all close to. We are all sick, but most of us not as sick as we imagine. And yet therein lies the problem for family and friends.
In thought alone, an amazing new theory for the understanding of illness, now asserts that illness always occurs with multiple persons involved. Illness occurs in elaborate scenarios that we, passively, have until this point never been able to perceive. Just because of the assumption: that illness is restricted to the individual in which it is most obviously apparent. I say, the observer is alway guilty of what he observes. And the cause of any illness must be sought admist the group who knows, and knows they know, the apparent victim, ah, all the many victims of the widespread afflictions our miserable subjectivity has . . . forced.
In all cases an illness can actually be treated by treating a corollary illness in someone else, if only one can and is willing to find it. SIMPLY PUT, a person suffering the symptoms from a cold can see this cold vanish, upon the treating of someone else who has a headache, and vica versa. Or both can disappear by the identifying and treating of even an injury, to a third party sympathetically related to both of the others.
DRASTICLY PUT, our whole medical establishment is furiously devoted to the philosophy that a person is somehow inwardly responsible for their own fate, and it’s grotesque manifestations. Isolating them, focusing upon a treatment only dealing with what appears to be wrong with them, the apparent victim, they engage in a system of societal blame, erected for the social purpose of protecting those who are really to blame, ie those who know them, who have thoughts about them.
We are killing each other. We need a type of Family Doctor.
Suffering is in all situations sympathic, and no one suffers alone. And further, those who are visibly suffering are obviously displaying the effects of a remote cause. They are incurable, unless the cause is found, or rather admitted, by those who hold them still in their thoughts. The true Family Doctor must bring in all those who know them to find out the cause, ah the multiple causes of their pain.
Gentlemen. The very idea is to lighten up. For if you are feeling good, then I say send those thoughts out, into that region where we are all connected. For listen to the truth. People can transfer and assimilate each others physical beings, most prominantly it appears in the area of sickness; but also this must be going on in their general health, because health is not simply the absence of sickness, but an aggregate of conditions which also are involved in sympathetic interlockings between people who know each other.
This focuses, once again I must say, our attention on the reality of people knowing each other. This theory does not suggest that people are not individuals, but that they are not individuals in this area of illness and mere physical being. But they are members of a group, and this group can be identified, the amazing theory goes on to say, as those whom one knows in their thoughts. Is there some question who it is, you know in your thoughts? I’d say think of family and friends, and consider who you might be draining of life . . .
People actually can identify each other in their thoughts when that other person is not there, and the recognition is certain, though of course there are states of mind in dreams and in confusion when people are blended. But that leads into a different study. This study is based on the simple assertion that there is no case where a person is sick all by themselves, but always there is something else going on with a person they know at the same time. And that something else going on is equally important to address, in fact is the way to address the first observed illness as an isolated case. In a society with this understanding, the first medical action taken when a person is taken sick would be to LOOK AT EVERYON ELSE. For the person who is conspicuously ill is not the cause of anything and has not the cause of their illness within themself; but they are suffering the obvious effects of something else. And yes! Examining those around them, or those who have a dwelling within their thoughts, should turn up the cause of their illness. Do not examples abound!
We have the capacity and the might to inflict our horrible imaginings upon others, and we placidly watch them suffer.
God! This begins to sound obviously true. Thank you. I am feeling a little faint with the pressure of how true this might be. I will lecture upon this further, hopefully, and invite the comments of Victor Strabimus.
Posted by mortimer at 02:47 AM | Comments (1642)