A BRIDGED COMPRENDIUM OF MANY FOLDS A Guided Meditational Survey of Theoretical Rationalization and Conceptual Geometry Manifestation, Presented in Six Recitation Song Chapters 𝄆 Sight / Unseen 𝄇 FOREWORD: A SIGHT UNSEEN The Theorists’ Manifold Do you experience, cognitive dissonance? Are your cognates, dissident? Do you suppress your cogs' dissentient HIIISSSS? Will you make a cognizant dissociative WIIISSHH, come true? Will you create, a manifold? Like the string theorists, who fretted for decades to resolve the dissonance between big things, like stars and little things like electrons, whose different behaviors suggested they were governed by different physics, as if, from different realities. So the theorists went on an inward journey to limits of their minds and produced a stunning vision of strings, vibrating in manifold patterns which they said, exerted unseen forces, on the big and little things, that aligned their dissonant worlds. But for the theory to work they had to invent six new invisible dimensions which sadly meant the manifolds could never be seen. Yet, wishing to behold their creations, they made models of how they imagined their manifolds to appear, like sculptures of deities. And their models are hypnotic amalgamations, smooth labyrinths of intersecting surfaces, orbiting and merging and folding around each other like clockwork. 𝄆 Into the Fold / In Two 𝄇 PREFACE: INTO THE FOLD Your Manifold Traversing a manifold, one can easily lose themselves. Because when you slide along its frictionless surface, in easy, perpetual motion, eventually you arrive back where you started, only upside down. Another orbit, and you arrive there again, but now facing backwards. This time, you can observe yourself, moments ahead of yourself. The perfect opportunity to sneak up, and give yourself a nice little massage, or a Wet Willie, or worse. The possibilities are endless. What will you do to yourself, when you encounter yourselves, inside your manifold? Of course, the puzzling model of the string theorists is but one of many, many varieties of manifolds, a small selection of which are documented here in this bridged comprendium. Many, many manifolds. 𝄆 Toward Something / To Ward 𝄇 CHAPTER ONE: TOWARD SOMETHING The Monk’s Manifold An aspiring monk repeats the same whispered words endlessly during a two year spiritual vacation in the Himalayas. When he does it with his eyes closed, he feels he is transcending toward something, perhaps even physically levitating. One day he has a revelation, and decides to go back to his parents’ house in Santa Cruz, California, to run for US president. His campaign promise is a full ban of genetically modified foods, which studies say would deepen climate change and eventually lead to global famine. But that doesn’t stop his campaign, which continues, inconsequentially, for decades. Many, many manifolds. 𝄆 A Kind of Mirror / of Kind 𝄇 CHAPTER TWO: A KIND OF MIRROR The Artist’s Manifold A painter dedicates her entire life’s practice to clown portraits. During the 285th clown painting she realizes her clowns are a kind of mirror to society. And this informs her thinking for many years, until, on the 712th clown painting, she sees that, that wasn’t exactly right, and that really her clown practice was moreso a kind of self portraiture. For her centennial birthday she requests that a clown paint her. So her family hires Hee Haw. You know, Hee Haw. The clown who paints animal patterns on children's faces at carnival. Feeling the occasion momentous, Hee Haw carefully paints her with his finest design the iridescent fibers of the morpho butterfly in uncomfortably photorealistic detail. Transfigured, the painter slides deeper into her manifold. Many, many manifolds. 𝄆 Things / To / Do 𝄇 CHAPTER THREE: THINGS TO DO The Manager’s Manifold The Ouroboros snake is famously depicted eating itself, starting at the tail. But it’s never depicted post-meal, because nobody knows whether having consumed itself, if it grows in size, or disappears. Gary, a middle manager at Humana Health Insurance by day, and secret cannibal by night, is an Ouroboros enthusiast, as evidenced by his Ouroboros back tattoo. One day, catching up on his things to do list he sees the reminder he’d set for himself to learn the Ouroboros’s fate once and for all, and decides to do so by making himself the final victim of his cannibalism. He does determine the correct answer, but fails to document it. Many, many manifolds. 𝄆 Finding the Resolve(ing) the Finding 𝄇 CHAPTER FOUR: FINDING THE RESOLVE The Economist’s Manifold A distinguished economist is celebrated for her perfect mathematical models, advocating austerity, and is awarded with a position as Senior Economic Advisor for the World Bank. Some years later, her successors publish an apologetic white paper re-examining her once fashionable ideas now as the failed theories behind catastrophic inequality. Around the same time, the think tank she founded is shuttered after it is exposed as the propaganda arm of its financier, a notorious investment bank executive. One night at home, she stares at the large framed print of the cover of her first book, titled “The Virtuous Loop of Austerity”. It’s an on-the-nose photograph of workers on an unusual, circular assembly line at a hula hoop factory in Bangladesh which years after this cover shoot, famously burned down, killing ninety employees. As her eyes trace the loop, entranced, she briefly contemplates the unfathomable, before finding the resolve, to begin her next act as a financial lobbyist. Many, many manifolds. 𝄆 All In / All 𝄇 CHAPTER FIVE: ALL IN ALL The Gambler’s Manifold A gambling addict contemplates his wager for a double pair of three-eyed jokers, a card that may not exist, and which he cannot see if he has, because he’s blind. But he’s never let that stop him before, ‘cause he’s got that contagious, land-of-the-free optimism. And speaking, as he does, in rhyming, circular logic, he says… “All in all, we’re all all in in that big casino. Ya know amigo?” And he says… “Name me one other investment out there, that isn’t built on air?” And he says… “Wile E. Coyote only fell when he looked down. And that’s only a problem for you sighted clowns.” And he’s not wrong is he? When he says, You gotta spend money to make money. You gotta spend money to make money to spend money You gotta spend money to make money to spend money, to make money. That’s the mantra for betting the house in the home of the brave. Many, many manifolds. 𝄆 Halfway To 𝄇 CHAPTER SIX: HALFWAY TO HALFWAY The Perfectionist’s Manifold A designer drug chemist feels she’s halfway to achieving her dream of formulating the perfect high, which she plans to call the Blue Dahlia. She has a back tattoo of a Blue Dahlia, the notoriously elusive flower that botanists have yet to create despite centuries of failed hybridizations. She decorates her lab with dahlias that she has spray painted blue, regrettably asphyxiating them. Many, many manifolds. 𝄆 Fore/see Ourselves For Ourselves 𝄇 AFTERWORD: SEE FOR OURSELVES Our Manifolds Though the many, many manifolds exhibit a great diversity of geometries their topological paths can all be said to fold perpetually inward. When lost within a manifold, the only way out is through manifold inversion, which though navigationally unchartable, is known to require both inward and outward motion simultaneously. To that end, do you want to see my back tattoo? Can I touch your manifold? Will you touch my manifold?