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But perhaps everyone needs a tiny part of themselves that can, metaphorically, be allowed to run naked in the rain,* to think the unthinkable thoughts, to hide in corners and spy on the world, to do the forbidden but enjoyable deeds.
Humanity practically was things that didn’t have a position in time and space, such as imagination, pity, hope, history, and belief. Take those away and all you had was an ape that fell out of trees a lot.
WITCHES ARE MATRILINEAL, said Death. THEY FIND IT MUCH EASIER TO CHANGE MEN THAN TO CHANGE NAMES.
“Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, re-created anew. Therefore, he understood, there is, in truth, no Past, only a memory of the Past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.”
But it is possible, after a while, to develop certain dangerous habits of thought. One is that, while all important enterprises need careful organization, it is the organization that needs organizing, rather than the enterprise. And another is that tranquillity is always a good thing.
Lu-Tze had no time at all. Time was something that largely happened to other people; he viewed it in the same way that people on the shore viewed the sea. It was big and it was out there, and sometimes it was an invigorating thing to dip a toe into, but you couldn’t live in it all the time. Besides, it always made his skin wrinkle.
“Dojo! What is Rule One!” Even the cowering challenger mumbled along with the chorus: “Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling man!” “Good rule, Rule One,” said Lu-Tze,
“Is it not written in the sacred text, ‘There’s a lot goes on we don’t know about, in my opinion’?” said Lu-Tze.
“It could only be here and now. For it is written: ‘It never rains but it pours.’” Rinpo looked puzzled, and then enlightenment dawned. “A jug,” he said, looking pleased. “A jug never rains, but it pours!”
There wasn’t room for small talk in a big universe.
IN MY EXPERIENCE, SUSAN, WITHIN THEIR HEADS TOO MANY HUMANS SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN THE MIDDLE OF WARS THAT HAPPENED CENTURIES AGO.
“Cultural” sort of solved problems by explaining that they weren’t really there.
Insanity depended on your point of view, he always said, and if it was the view through your own underpants then everything looked fine.
Because,’” he read. “Good answer,” said Lu-Tze, gently caressing a minute crag with a camel-hair brush. “Just ‘Because,’ master? No reason?” “Reason? What reason can a mountain have? And, as you accumulate years, you will learn that most answers boil down, eventually, to ‘Because.’”
“But did not Wen say that if the truth is anywhere, it is everywhere?” said Lobsang.
“Rule Two,” said Lu-Tze, “is: Never refuse a weapon.” He took a few steps back. “In your own time, boy.”
“When in doubt, choose to live.
No one notices something that works too well.
“Y’know, most of what you get taught is lies. It has to be. Sometimes if you get the truth all at once, you can’t understand it.
The Auditors avoided death by never going so far as to get a life.
They were learning fast, or at least collecting data, which they considered to be the same as learning.
“Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom in sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?” Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: “A fish!” And Clodpool went away, satisfied.
The big fantasy was that the world was the place where the toast didn’t care if it came butter-side down or not, where logic was sensible, and that things could be made not to have happened.
Around her, historians climbed library ladders, fumbled books onto their lecterns, and generally rebuilt the image of the past to suit the eyesight of today.
Time waited for no man, they said. Perhaps she’d waited for one, once.
“Interesting,” said Lu-Tze. “Mrs. Cosmopilite says, ‘Seeing is believing’ and, strangely enough, the Great Wen said, ‘I have seen, and I believe!’”
Humans weren’t individuals, they were, each one, a committee!
Only gods have enough time to name all the pebbles on a beach, but gods don’t have the patience.
“Look, that’s why there’s rules, understand? So that you think before you break ’em.”
Emergent behavior again. Complications always crept in. Everything changed.
So what I think is happening is that they’re finding out what being human really means.” “Which is?” “That you’re not as much in control as you think.”
Decisions made by everyone were decisions made by no one, which therefore precluded any possibility of blame.
A city might not need a king, but it can always use big rooms and some handy large walls, long after the monarchy is but a memory and the building is renamed The Glorious Memorial To The People’s Industry.
“—says Left but points Right! It has no sense!” “The fault is yours! We disobeyed the first sign! Woe to them that stray onto the pathway of irregularity!” “Don’t you give me that, you organic thing! I raise my voice at you, you—”
Seeing things a human shouldn’t have to see makes us human.
Susan was sensible. It was, she knew, a major character flaw.
“And personalities define themselves in terms of other personalities.”
There had always been plenty of those—small apocalypses, not the full shilling at all, fake apocalypses: apocryphal apocalypses. Most of them had been back in the old days, when the world as in “end of the world” was often objectively no wider than a few villages and a clearing in the forest. And those little worlds had ended. But there had always been somewhere else.
In order to fear, you had to be a me. Don’t let anything happen to me. That was the song of fear.
There are different kinds of rules. From the simple comes the complex, and from the complex comes a different kind of simplicity. Chaos is order in a mask . . .
IN ORDER TO HAVE A CHANGE OF FORTUNE AT THE LAST MINUTE YOU HAVE TO TAKE YOUR FORTUNE TO THE LAST MINUTE,
“Think of everything. It’s an everyday word. But ‘everything’ means . . .everything. It’s a much bigger word than ‘universe.’
If you told humans what the future held, it wouldn’t.
Susan was very strict about eating in class and took the view that, if there were rules, then they applied to everyone, even her. Otherwise they were merely tyranny. But rules were there to make you think before you broke them.
