Apophenia

Contributed by Rivka Jacobs on 11/03/09

The Observatory complex looked like a cluster of warmed-over Art Deco Mosques. America’s version of the stolid, industrial art and architecture of the 1930s. Kind of a Taj Mahal dedicated to science, made up of bits and pieces of American Depression-era chic. It was still beautiful, even impressive as they walked into the central rotunda of the main building.

Linda was dressed all in black. Black corduroy pants, black boots, black mock-turtleneck and black fuzzy vest. Her shoulder-length hair was dyed blond, with little sweeps of pink glowing on her head here and there. She wore earrings of her own design, that she ordered through some Wiccan website that made Celtic-themed jewelry. Sean was tall and stocky. He was dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, and jacket. He was clean cut, with short auburn hair. They were both 26 years old, and had known each other for years, since middle school.

This was one of their spontaneous outings. They lived in San Diego but suddenly decided to visit this astronomical observatory and planetarium in Los Angeles.

“Wow-za,” Linda said sarcastically, as she craned her neck and studied the murals painted high up in the rotunda’s dome. Suspended from the center of the dome like a gigantic light-pull, was a Foucault Pendulum, swinging lazily back and forth and in a circle, somehow proving that the earth rotates. “Night and day,” Linda sang, “You are the one for me….” She grabbed Sean like she wanted him to play Fred Astaire. “Vintage Hollywood.”

“Hmm,” Sean studied his flyer, “The artist was some movie director and art director named Hugo Ballin. He is definitely not Diego Rivera.”

Linda checked her cell phone that was in one of her fanny-packs. Her earrings dangled and jingled.

“What are those things?” Sean asked as they headed for the stairway that led to the upper gallery and other exhibits.

Linda tilted her head to the left and shook the figure hanging from her left ear. “This is the green man,” she said, and then she flicked the other earring, “And this is the green lady.”

“Uh huh.”

“You love all this kind of stuff, too, you know it. Wooohooo …” Linda was running up the stairs, leaving Sean behind. “Just like Myst. MystReal, that is. I’m flying toward the Observatory, and I’m in the Observatory.” They stood outside the double doors of the planetarium. “If I go in, I can click and suddenly I’m lying flat and looking up and I can see the three dates that signal the end of the world.” She held her arms out and did a half-turn.

“Linda ….” Sean sometimes wondered how they could still be the same age.

She made a squinty face at him, and then turned and closed her eyes. “I sometimes dream I’m flying up and down stairways and exploring different ages; I’m in Myst, I’m the Stranger.” She looked down at the first floor, at the drop of the Foucault Pendulum. “That reminds me of the pendulum in “Lost.” I think Daniel Faraday is the brilliant stranger who created the pendulum in the monastery. That pendulum is used to predict where the Island will be in space and time. It moves according to the forces of quantum mechanics, electromagnetic uncertainties and time, instead of the Coriolis Force.”

“Mmm Hmm.” She has always been like this, Sean thought. Continuously moving him back and forth between conflicting emotions.

They waited for the planetarium show to start; the doors remained closed.

Linda continued, “Remember what I told you, about synchronicity, how everything is somehow connected.”

Sean nodded.

“Look at this place,” she swept her arm at the murals above them, and pointed at the more distant walls. “Science and history and mathematics and time. Look up there,” she pointed to the convex ceiling. “The zodiac, Roman and Greek gods. All like a movie. All supposed to be ‘symbolic.’ But there is no symbolism here. It’s all very superficial, it’s annotation, not symbolism.”

Sean thought about all their ups and downs together. Linda was of course unique. A comic book geek, a computer gamer, who played at being Goth or Renaissance according to whim. She hated math and science in school but knew more about mathematical theory and science than anyone he knew. She read all kinds of books voraciously but couldn’t finish a semester in college. She was the American version of what the Japanese called a onna otaku, except instead of Sailor Moon anime books Linda read DC and Marvel, and instead of gadgets and techno-doo-dahs and romance magazines, Linda collected artifacts from and studied different cultures and coutures. And she remembered everything. And she knew everything. And she couldn’t keep a job or get a degree in anything.

“These earrings, the green man and the green lady, these are symbols ancient and pervasive throughout human history, found in societies all over the world. The image of a man’s face, with vines and trees and tendrils growing out of his mouth and eyes and ears. And green. Did you know that the ancient Egyptian god Osiris is a green man?”

“I think you told me that once.”

“He is a god of life and death, of death and resurrection, of the underworld where he also makes the new crops grow, the ground fallow or fertile. And he is green. People forget that. Isis and Istar and Eoestre are all the same goddess. She is Brigit and the Lady of the Lake, the Green Lady, the Triple Goddess….”

Sean had dated other girls in high school, and lately had dated some of the young women who worked with him at the garden center. They were your average American females. They were interested in the usual American female things. They talked about things that he had no interest in. Sean was also a gamer and a comic book geek and loved science fiction and still had all his action figures from his youth carefully packed away in his apartment.

“Do you see that sign there?” Linda pointed to the “radioactive” sign, in black and yellow on a door off to the side. “Hmm,” she interrupted herself, “I wonder what’s radioactive in this place?”

“I don’t know what that could be,” Sean said. He looked at his watch. Ten minutes to show time. The crowd inside would be coming out in a few minutes.

“Anyway,” Linda continued, glancing at Sean to see if he was paying attention to what she said. “Sean, dear ….”

“I’m listening, babe.” He smiled at her. They had been friends so long, he felt she could read his mind.

“That sign was invented by some military type? It’s an ancient symbol. It’s a tripart symbol. It’s the Norse “triceps” that is a sign of protection, it’s the Odin Horn. The Celts have almost the same design in the Triqueta. All related to the triple spiral design of the Great Goddess. Everything is connected. All humans share a subconscious past; we recreate our symbols, we reinvent our ancient beliefs anew. Like Chomsky says, everything we need to know, our cognitive function, the ability to express things in language, is already there, it’s innate.”

Sean dated pretty girls. Some beautiful girls. They excited him, the sex was relaxing and stimulating. And when these girls wanted something more, like a relationship, like too many phone conversations about their friends or “Desperate Housewives” or movie stars or some political talking point left or right, Sean said “Good bye.” Then he’d call Linda and tell her all about his latest ex-girlfriend. They would go out. They would talk for hours about their TV shows and then talk for hours more about the latest books they’d read, or discuss politics and current events. Listening to Linda talk about anything was a holistic experience. It wasn’t about the facts, or the quotes, or the quick answers, but the sheer weight of the sea of knowledge and curiosity and imagination that engulfed anyone who she let in her world.

“No, this place isn’t a place of threes,” Linda continued. “It’s a four-place, a four-square place, a foundation, a civil institution. The art is institutional art, resistant to the collective unconscious.”

People were coming out of the planetarium now. They all looked happy “like glazed doughnuts,” said Linda. But she added, “I love looking at the stars, even fake stars.”

“You will try to have fun, then?” Sean grinned at her. Code for, keep your mouth shut and try to enjoy yourself and lets give our complex minds some simple pleasures.

Linda folded her arms and nodded. “Let’s do it,” she said.

Sean loved Linda. He didn’t want to have sex with her. He didn’t want to marry her. But he loved her. More than anyone. He knew she cared for him, maybe she loved him, he didn’t really know for sure. He didn’t know if she was jealous of his girlfriends, or his sexual relationships. She never seemed to be. But she was always there for him, always had been there when he needed someone to talk to. He had no idea how their relationship would end, he wished it could go on like this forever. Even if he knew at the same time, it couldn’t.

Sean put his hand on Linda’s shoulder as they walked into the planetarium and looked for good seats. She was looking up, all around, he guessed trying to find some portent or sign of the end of times.