Moving Sideways

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 disagree1), 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 against which to judge our quirks, the quirks must not exist. Thus all is right with the world.


  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.