Topology

23 October 2003
Matt takes a walk.

I'm walking on the pavement on the right hand side of the road. The building to my right is four storeys high and continues along the length of the street. Between the pavement and the building is a trench [1]. A black fence [2] separates the pavement from the trench.

For about ten metres there is a cutaway section [3]. This cutaway occurs twice. [4]

The topology - the trench, the fence and its connections, the swimming pool full of water (and the open door and the fact that room must be connected to the hotel door between the two cutaways) [6], the cutaways with the beam and the pillar and the hole at the back - the topology makes me weak at the knees.

Before I saw this, leaving work on Friday, I saw a man with a mirrored cycle helmet [7]. Then a man leaving his office and doing a double-take at the pattern of bark on a tree. Then a man with blue trainers. The complexity of reality brought tears of joy to my eyes.

1. The trench is a few feet wide and one storey deep; windows open onto it from the building's basement. Occassionally there is a door, and occassionally the door it open, and through it I can see down onto the end of a swimming pool. The pool is full, and once I have seen a person lifting herself out of it.

2. The fence is metal and consists of narrow bars spaced at about two or three a foot with a rail almost at the top (the bars turn into short spikes). Every ten feet or so there is a long bar, perpendicular to the fence, which connects the rail of the fence to the building.

3. For this section, instead of the building coming all the way up to the pavement, everything above ground level is recessed by about six metres.

- At the front of the cutaway, on the edge of the trench, there are flowerboxes [5].

- At the very back of the cutaway, there is a hole in the ground that appears to be another trench. This one is wider, and does not go the full width of the cutaway, only the right-hand two-things. [4] It's on the left of one, and the right of the other.

- At the level of the first-storey floor (at the top of the ground storey) and at the very front of the cutaway, a stone beam crosses. Half-way along the beam, a pillar goes down to ground level. On top of the beams are repeating stone bollards crossed all the way along with a stone rail: a stub stone fence, basically, with many more holes.

4. In one of the cutaways, the rearmost trench is just a hole. In the other, a translucent roof bulges above ground level a little from a building below.

5. Once I saw a person watering the flowerboxes. She held a long metal tube.

6. Except - I've realised - that's not the case! The hotel door in the middle of the cutaways is on the other side of the trench, and the trench continues underneath in a tunnel! So to get in the hotel you have to cross over a bridge. But: To the left of the left-most cutaway, there's a little road into a mews. The road is actually a tunnel because the first storey and upwards crosses over above. The mews is a 'T' shape, where you enter at the stem of the 'T' and the roads goes left and right (these are both dead ends). On the stem of the 'T' and on the right is the entrace to a fitness club. The fitness club must lead to the pool.

7. The mirrored helmet reminds me that everything I see, everything I'm feeling is patterns of sensation in my brain; that I don't relate to the world directly but have the impression of the world inside me. That no matter how much I describe it, this topology only comes into existence in my internal reconstruction, and the wonder and awe and beauty and happiness I find in the isness, I carry it with me everywhere. In that context, the reflecting helmet representing the internal brain state it envelopes is for me half joke.

And half cathedral.

Current clown:

18 December 2003. George writes: This List

Most recent ten:

15 December 2003. Jamie writes: Seven Songs
11 December 2003. Dan writes: Spinning Jenny
8 December 2003. Victor writes: Rock Opera
4 December 2003. Matt writes: The Mirrored Spheres of Patagonia
1 December 2003. George writes: Charm
27 November 2003. James writes: On Boxing
24 November 2003. Jamie writes: El Matador del Amor; Or, the Man who Killed Love
20 November 2003. Dan writes: Rights Management
17 November 2003. Victor writes: Walking on Yellow
13 November 2003. Matt writes: Disintermediation
(And alas we lost Neil, who last wrote Cockfosters)

Also by this clown:

4 December 2003. Matt writes: The Mirrored Spheres of Patagonia
13 November 2003. Matt writes: Disintermediation
23 October 2003. Matt writes: Topology
2 October 2003. Matt writes: Haunted
8 September 2003. Matt writes: The Gardener's Diary
21 August 2003. Matt writes: The Starling Variable
31 July 2003. Matt writes: Two stories
14 July 2003. Matt writes: What is real?
23 June 2003. Matt writes: Mapping and journeys
29 May 2003. Matt writes: Extelligence
5 May 2003. Matt writes: Religious experiences
17 April 2003. Matt writes: Seeing the Light
27 March 2003. Matt writes: Flowering
10 March 2003. Matt writes: Climax state
10 February 2003. Matt writes: The Role of Cooperation in Human Interaction
20 January 2003. Matt writes: The same old subroutine
2 January 2003. Matt writes: New beginnings
9 December 2002. Matt writes: Packet Loss
18 November 2002. Matt writes: Wonderland
31 October 2002. Matt writes: Having and losing
10 October 2002. Matt writes: Trees of Knowledge
19 September 2002. Matt writes: The online life of bigplaty47
29 August 2002. Matt writes: Divorce
8 August 2002. Matt writes: How to get exactly what you want
18 July 2002. Matt writes: Eleven Graceland endings
27 June 2002. Matt writes: Listopad, Prague 1989
3 June 2002. Matt writes: Engram bullets
6 May 2002. Matt writes: Sound advice
15 April 2002. Matt writes: How it all works: Cars
21 March 2002. Matt writes: Proceeding to the next stage
25 February 2002. Matt writes: Spam quartet
31 January 2002. Matt writes: Person to person
7 January 2002. Matt writes: All for the best
13 December 2001. Matt writes: Life
19 November 2001. Matt writes: Giving is better than receiving
25 October 2001. Matt writes: Ludo
1 October 2001. Matt writes: Gifts, contracts, and whispers
6 September 2001. Matt writes: The world is ending
13 August 2001. Matt writes: The Church of Mrs Bins
16 July 2001. Matt writes: Things I Don't Have
25 June 2001. Matt writes: Fighting the Good Fight
31 May 2001. Matt writes: Code dependency
7 May 2001. Matt writes: Up The Arse, Or Not At All
5 April 2001. Matt writes: The increasing nonlinearity of time
19 March 2001. Matt writes: Hit Me Baby, One More Time
22 February 2001. Matt writes: Space, Matter, Cities, Sausages
29 January 2001. Matt writes: Truth in Advertising
1 January 2001. Matt writes: Six predictions for tomorrow
7 December 2000. Matt writes: You must reach this line to ride
16 November 2000. Matt writes: The truth about the leopard
23 October 2000. Matt writes: Shopping mauls
28 September 2000. Matt writes: Heavy traffic on the road to Utopia
4 September 2000. Matt writes: Sixty worlds a minute
17 July 2000. Matt writes: You, Me, and Face-space

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