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-title: 'Moving Sideways'
-project: 'Book of Hezekiah'
-project-order: 5
-project-prev: 'proverbs.html'
-project-next: 'problems.html'
-genre: 'prose'
-...
-
-A dog moving sideways is sick; a man moving sideways is drunk.  Thus if
-you want to be mindful of the movings of the universe sideways, become
-either drunk or sick.  By doing this you remove yourself from the
-equation, and are able to observe, without being observed, the universe
-as it dances sideways drunkenly.
-
-Shit wait.  The problem is not that by observing you are observed
-(although quantum mechanics may disagree[^1]), because obviously dogs
-don't know we're observing them when we watch them through cameras in
-their little yard while they play and eat and poop---who poops knowingly
-on camera?  The problem is *the actual act of observing that distorts the
-world into what we want it to be*.
-
-What I want to know is this: Why is this necessarily a problem?  The dog
-is made, by mankind, to frolic and poop and sniff and growl and dig.  Why
-cannot the man be made to observe the world incorrectly around him, and
-worry about it?  Men have always wandered about the earth; does it not
-make sense that also they should wonder in their minds what makes it all
-work?[^2] In fact this is the very center of the creative being: the
-ability to move sideways, to dance with reality and judge it as it
-judges you, much like teenagers at the junior prom.
-
-Of course, reality doesn't judge us back.  But that doesn't mean that it
-doesn't!  If you think it's judging you, then *observe in your
-surroundings your own insecurities*.  It is obvious that this way of
-doing things is far from vogue; usually projecting [inner pain][] onto the
-outer world is classified as pathology.  However, this is because it is
-assumed that the outer world is *on its own terms*, which it obviously
-isn't, as far as we know.  It follows that as [there is no backdrop][backdrop]
-against which to judge our quirks, the quirks must not exist.  Thus all
-is right with the world.
-
-[inner pain]: telemarketer.html
-[backdrop]: philosophy.html
-
-[^1]: Quantum mechanics, as is well known, are the most hornery and
-    least agreeable of all mechanics.  The cost to get one quantum
-    serviced is usually at least eight times more expensive than the
-    cost of an average automobile tune-up, for reasons not clearly
-    known.  The quantum mechanics themselves claim it's the smallness of
-    their work that justifies the price, but it doesn't really look like
-    they're doing anything, and besides, my quantum always seems to
-    break again within six months---maybe I'm just driving it too hard.
-
-[^2]: I attempted to strike this terrible pun from the account, but
-    Hezekiah demanded I keep it if he were to continue the relation of
-    his prophecy-slash-advice column