The Lectures of Mortimer Shy

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.

#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.

#2 When Aliens Replace Friends and Relatives

Now, in my Second Address (delivered before the Committee for Determining Real People CDRP), I confront a deeper and even more serious consideration. We have to deal with those aliens who, it suddenly appears, have replaced certain close friends and relatives.

I say suddenly, but what is sudden is the realisation you have when, suddenly, after a long time of difficulty with a person, you realise this can�t actually be that person; this must be an alien version of that person, and one who is dedicated to the mission of mixing you up and possibly driving you crazy. This of course is potentially more devastating, this invasion of aliens right into one�s private circle, than the invasion of aliens at top levels of government or in places of no apparent consequence--as of yet, like school crossing guards and pizza delivery people, convenience store clerks or car mechanics . . .

And of course once this gets out that it has happened anywhere, that an old friend living in Vermont, say (this is what happened in my own case), or another older friend in Baltimore, drasticly, or one�s own sister, for God�s sake, has been replaced by an alien, who has set about to confound precisely them, set about to implant hostility and doubt in the other�s mind to corrupt him; once this gets out, the mere idea that this could be happening, everyone will start looking closely at their own friends and relatives and start to wonder about each of them.

Because friends and relatives are precisely not looked at so closely after a while, and are given the benefit of doubt, as we say, and great latitude; in fact they are allowed to do things that if someone you didn�t know did you wouldn�t want to even know that person. With this new possibility that they may actually not be the person they originally were at all, but have been replaced, at one point when you weren�t watching closely, which is all the time really in some cases; well just the idea is enough to cause chaos. In fact the idea of so unsettling that we may never get to know the actual story. This idea alone, even if untrue!, has the potential of ruining circles of friends, and whole families, intimate groups which have grown smaller over the years--and can�t afford have a whole person rubbed out!

In fact in life after a certain point one doesn�t really make new friends, at least one can�t make new old friends (obviously), and that is why the close scrutiny has let up, particularly in regards to friends living in Vermont, in my case, because I always felt guilty in their regards for having left them there, when I moved back to my hometown; since they originally relied upon me so much, for inspiration and guidance. But the point is, though the alien replacement has occurred and I am obligated to report this, I want to simultaneously observe that if there is a dramatic increase in the number of reported alien replacements, now, a good many of those may actually just be fear of an alien replacement. Which is why we have to have a technique for positive identification. We have to have a method people can use for determining whether their old friends and relatives are still themselves, or have been victims of a substitution. (For instance, in taking another look at my sister I decided she still was my sister, after all, and that was . . . sort of a relief.)

But if this can be established that this has happened, and a bonafide look alike has swept in, then of course one has to get busy, not only having to decide how to deal with the alien, but having to ask: what happened to the person?

#1 The Difference Between Aliens and Real People

In my first Lecture, I would simply ask the question. How do you tell the aliens from the humans?
Well, I say, it can be done!
The aliens are flawed in a very specific way. They are perfectly programmed in every respect, but since they have no central being there are discrepancies between the various programs. Their various functions are not in harmony, so to speak, so that for instance if you look at their hands gestures when they are speaking, they are wrong, they don�t go together. This guy speaking publicly is using hand gestures appropriate to a preacher; but he is all off, these signals are just are not coordinated with what he is saying. They are rhythmically coordinated, yes, but metaphorically off.
This is because they are not spontaneous, as are the words from his mouth not spontaneous, as with real humans at least half of what we say and gesticulate is being made or reformed as we do it.
In fact many speakers get signals and vocabulary power, so to speak, precisely from the waving of their arms and the illustration, so to speak, of what they are saying as they go along. But this creative state of being, or this being always in a state of creative action, so to speak, is not the case with the aliens. They are essentially pretending, and have to pretend in every facet and then coordinate these facets.
It is difficult being an alien, that�s for sure; it is like being an actor, but without benefit of the memory of being a person and the whole storehouse of emotions to mimic on the spot and when needed in the portrayal the actor is making. In fact, it is so difficult being an alien, when you consider the actual and boundless difficulties, that we might wonder how they, the aliens, actually do it.
For there is no question these fellows are not human, or . . . maybe they are; maybe they are disintegrating humans. It might be possible to achieve this condition of apparent knowledge but discontinuity, or disharmony between facets of a normal complex functioning personality, if one started with a whole person and then subtracted from that. So that the hands and facial expressions of our speaker are in a lurch, so to speak, as soon as the guy goes to the podium and starts talking about the government�s plan on how to deal with the growing crisis. Or whatever the topic is supposed to be, being as I am so distracted by trying to figure out whether this is a real person, or an alien!
Actually, if you examine his facial expressions, and then examine his gesturing, and then listen to what he is saying, you will see that ALL THREE of these are running on separate platforms.

So! If you listen to these politically placed apparent aliens you can, I decide, determine that they are aliens by the observation that they are, first, stupid, and second, very organised. It is not possible for a group of stupid human beings to organise themselves into a unbreakable oath-taking group, without being discovered by other humans simply because they are on the lookout for idiot conspiracies and are smart enough to find them. But these stupid ones in fact well organised, and leave no trace of how they became that way; which proves they are aliens. Because human beings organise themselves according to like interests and goals; their team spirit and patriotism stems from this actual identity of purpose. Real people look out for each other because they are important to each other and the cause they share. But in the case of the aliens the team spirit is not a function of the team, so to speak, but has been programmed into each individual separately; they simply salute in the direction of . . . the podium, it has no reference.
This is hard indeed for people to believe, and even hard for me to express, but this is the distinction that allows you to understand how many aliens have managed to infiltrate the government, without actually having to meet with each other.