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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