Loading ...Sometimes credit is given and sometimes no credit. In the theory of shared responsibility, one man is the universe perceiving itself. This short story predicates that. One circle is drawn inside another quite easily, as is another inside the first and many are inside more than just the first, as can be done still quite easily. One person draws a circle, but he can not draw a hole. So, he takes his paper and his pencil to an expert shoemaker, who also could not draw a hole because he had never done it before and had long ago given up the privileges afforded by unusual thought for the comfort of established normal behavior.
But, he thought that a shoe is hollow if he takes it off in the morning. So, he asked for a broken shoe that the cobbler/shoemaker might have, and he put tuppence in it. He stared at it for a long time. He realized that rather than draw he should cut, and when he did he had a hole. But holes are quite not as easy as circles, and he could not cut inside his hole. Again he stared at the tuppence in the cobblemaker’s spare shoe–suffice it to say, that the cobblemaker did not give to him the shoe to own, but he accepted nevertheless that his activity with the spare shoe would do no more than annoy an annoying shoemaker, to explain the compartmentalizing that is going on.
An half hour later he cut two intersecting slits in a piece of paper and laughed because intersecting they were not holes. They were a hole, but not two holes. But he knew he cut them differently. He had had to turn the paper over so he could cut with his right hand both holes. Unfortunately the cobblermake guy did not believe him even though he-him could not write with his left hand. “I don’t know if you can write with your unicorn hand, or not. I can’t even prove that there are no left hands even though I have no hands nor eyes. When my wife baked me a cake that the dog ate before it I could eat, I did not believe that cake exists. I will not believe cake exists until I taste one before my dog. I am afraid because I do not know where the taste of the cake will go after we eat the cake. I do not even know where the tastes of the other cakes would have gone. Everything points to more dimensions. The parts of the alleged cake must as well have begun passing before I even noticed the interesting smell as not. And eventually my wife will use all her flour. My apprehension doubles because I do not know if she can still bake a cake with new flour. Everything points to more dimensions . . . My greatest fear is cake with eyes and even worse is no cake without eyes. The worst is nothing without eyes except me. I don’t need eyes if there are eyes.”
So, he knew that his two holes must point into the room one from each side of the paper. But a hole within a hole, inside another hole? As holes are holes two. He smiled. “If only I had more sides there then with three. Three of them, one each, not one not. All as holes are holes all.”
