2002-05-03 - 12:23 a.m.

After the phenomenal success of the acadelectronic presentation of my first theory, the renowned Midget Theory of Movies, I was the subject of a deluge of praise and adoration such as the world has never seen.

Flowers were thrown, dipped in finest gold and rarest orange blossom honey. Vestal virgins threw themselves at my feet, hoping for a taste of my gleaming zuppa toscana. Presidents, theocrats, Dostoevskian gamblers and wise men all called me seeking advice, solace, witticisms and guidance on the path towards truth.

I told them: Seek ye out Billy Barty, my children, and ye shall be saved.

I must admit, however, to one grievous omission in my otherwise masterful and no doubt world-shaking theory, which was pointed out with all due process by my dear comrade-in-charms, the Magistrate. In my meticulous listing of the endless contributions of the Little People to the world of film and entertainment, I neglected to mention that magnificent edifice which towers over the landscape of dwarfdom, the height to which they all hope to someday climb, the pinnacle of the small: Hervι Villechaize. This is the man who singlehandedly carried Fantasy Island to greatness. No further proof of this claim is necessary beyond pointing out that it did not last a year past the time when Hervι was unjustly fired after demanding to get as much money as Ricardo Montal-Khan. He carried that show. And as the Magistrate is quick to point out, he did a masterful job as Nick Nack in The Man with the Golden Gun, as well. Hervι ... we hardly knew ye.*

*Have you noticed how often I put links up to the Internet Movie DataBase? That's simply because it's by far the most useful and interesting and all-around time-consumingly-helpful site I've yet discovered in this great morass of hyperdata we dare to call "The Internet", as if there were some order to it.

Now, then. With such success behind me, I feel safe in pushing forward into slightly more ... metaphysical territory, and typing out with my metacarpals my highly metaphorical and slightly metamagical:

This is less of a carefully-researched and organized presentation of a logical argument so much as it is a highly subjective series of impressions and images as I vainly attempt to push what's tucked into the folds of my gray matter out my fingertips, through some molded plastic and copper, and into the aether.

So, then.

There's the ground.

There's the sky.

(See the cat? See the cradle?)

And there's humanity, strolling along on the one and staring at the other.

The way I figure it, each of us is within ourselves a little Tower of Babel. The greatest edifice wrought by humankind, embodying all the strangenesses and wonders that make us what we are.

Pull out the bones of the earth and make a stairway to the sky so you can shoot arrows at heaven!

We're all a tower of pride and majesty, in the arched cathedrals of our own heads, and we'll all fall to ruin if we forget how to talk to each other.

Pretty neat turn of phrase there, eh? Not a bad touch of the old thrupenny philosophy from Mr. Wheel, n'est pas? But wait! There's more!

Ah, yes, a tower is man. Bracing the sky up with our crowns and holding the ground down with our heels.

Firmness below, firmament above.

Feet on the ground, head in the clouds, that boy. We'll stomp the earth beneath our boots. When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun.

So what do we see when we look up?

And what do we miss when we look down?

Depends on what you're looking for, really.

If you look UP, aside from the possibility of becoming a reclusive mathematics genius with a penchant for self-trepannery, you'll see the endless reaches of the empyrean. Helios and his flaming steeds riding across the sky. Colors and chemicals and wonders and the whole of the Kingdom of the Air. Moving like clockwork.

The sky is what the Tower we all represent seems to strive for. Perhaps it's because we feel that heaven is up there. It's certainly roomy enough. Given the choice, however, I would point the Finger at our old friend Apollo.

You know the fellow. Music, wisdom, archery, oracular prophecy. All that good civilized stuff that we treasure so dearly. No need to take Apollo at face value, of course. He can go by any name he cares to, but the name he really dreams of being in his metaphorical fancies is PROGRESS.

Progress goes onward until it runs out of space and then it goes upward. Man walks the earth until there's nowhere left to turn but the stars.

I've got nowhere to go but UP, baby!

Music and magic and all that stuff Apollo loved? Those cloudy visions and flights of fantasy that ride the thermals in the sky above?

Sure, it's got dreams in it, the sky. You can't have progress without dreams. The modern world is carved out of blood and thunder, but it's certainly got a strange magical quality to it, doesn't it?

It does, my fellow windtalkers, it does.

Apollo gave us a heady sense of pride of place with his pie in the sky and the fancifully rigid order he placed on the world around us. He also gave us a future built out of dreams.

–––––––––

And then there's the earth. Mama Terra. The ground is where the good stuff happens. Things grow. Things die. Things fight. Things love. It's where all the life that makes up life goes ripsnorting along.

Earth is where Pan danced.

Lovely statue, isn't it? So lifelike it could be Lot's wife.

Salt of the earth, that woman.

Now, there's a fellow who knew how to have fun. Apollo might have taken music and set into onto sheets and sliced it into chords, but Pan was the one who blew on the reeds first.

Yes, he's naked. Lucky fellow. Don't you wish you were?

Some medievalists of unfortunate character felt obligated to take the image of a happy dancing goat boy and mutilate it into the Devil, who prior to getting horns, hooves, and a barbed tail assigned to him by the Divine Comedy Props Dept. had been a rather handsome angel and had, prior to his rather foolhardy run-in with the Man in Charge, been Prince of the Air.

Pride goeth before a fall. Keep watching the skies!

Pan wasn't the Devil. He was man of the soils, not a devourer of souls. A shepherd, a rusticated professor of the School of Hard Knocks. Admittedly, he had a few lustful tendencies, but at least he kept the nymphs entertained. And besides, what good man of the soil doesn't know how to sow wild oats?

As you sow, so shall you also reap. Makes you wonder why the Reaper is so Grim.

And a wine-bibber, Pan was. Yes, a close and personal friend of Bacchus, a real earthy fellow himself, although he rode up to the sky on a tide of ruby wine. Ah, wine. Blood of the grape, gift of the earth. We wouldn't be able to stargaze and bluesky if it weren't for the gentle touch of wine on philosophy, religion, medicine, and all those other Apollonian tricks of the trade.

The earth has a lot of fun to offer, and strange old ideas hidden in the dark places in tree roots, and life and love and laughter. But the longer you stay, the less you want to leave. Pan may have been the most fun-loving of the Olympians, but he was always counted least among them because he wouldn't ascend to the heights.

–––––––––

So, nu? Here we have humanity, each of us a tiny Atlas, gasping with the effort of holding the sky on our shoulders and slaking our titanic thirsts with the gentlesweet blood of the earth; finding our roots six feet under the soil but gazing at the stars while the gutter worms creep around us.

Is it wrong to reach for the sky? No. If we didn't quest for something higher and unseen, we'd have nowhere to go, and that's a nice way of saying we'd be lost.

Is it wrong to lay back in the wine-soaked grass and savor the deep places? No. If we forgot where we came from, we'd have no reason to go anywhere in the first place.

...

And the theory, Wheel?

Well, aside from my theory that there is no surer way to make a man ramble than to ask him about the nature of man, my theory runs thus:

Humanity will always be pushing towards the sky, but we must be careful not to scorch the earth as we ascend, so we'll have somewhere to land when we fall.

Excuse me while I kiss the sky.

- Wheel of Nowhere, Man.

*****

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