THIIM’S THEOREM OF CONSTANT RECURSIVE FOOTNOTATION
*There has been much speculation lately about the concerns of a certain Professor Zazzo Thim. Those close to his entourage have hinted of great discoveries coming from his academic research, although the actual manner of these advancements have not, as yet, been made public. However, mindful that the majority of my readers will not be familiar with the particular branch of literary extremism, of which Thim is an expert, let me condense the findings of his research into one simple paragraph: Professor Zazzo Thim has discovered that we are all living in a footnote.
For the last few weeks this pronouncement has vexed me greatly and I have been unable to conduct my life normally, that the entire world around me and all the people in it – and that everything we have done and everything our civilisation has achieved – is nothing but a mere academic footnote at the bottom of a non-existent page. To think that the vastness of our reality should be condensed as such – into smaller script, denoted with a tiny star at the beginning of the first sentence – not only cheapens the act of living, but hints that we are missing something within the main body of the existential text. My mind, this last week, has positively been buzzing.
This morning I decided I would seek out this eminent professor and perhaps divulge from him the exact manner of his discovery. When I arrived at the facility where he is employed, however, I was told that I would only be able to enter if I had the correct security details and paperwork stamped by the relevant departments. The staff of the facility were loath to let me enter, that I might stumble into some literary laboratory and blunder against some experiment, thereby ruining years of precious work. Yet when I explained that I had come to see Professor Zazzo Thim, they were only too glad to let me enter. ‘Don’t bother knocking’, they said, ‘Just walk straight in’. Something about their manner told me that Thim did not command the greatest respect from his colleagues.
I was guided to his door at the end of a corridor and the receptionist wished me luck before running quite smartly back the way she had come. Hesitantly, I knocked on the wooden door quite feebly, and was surprised when the door opened immediately and Professor Zazzo Thim stood before me. ‘Come in!’, he said, ‘Come in! I don’t care who you are, come in! His old hand gripped round my upper arm and pulled me, physically, into the room. ‘Dear boy, dear boy!’, he said, enthusiastically. ‘How honoured I am that you have come to visit me! Sit down and make yourself at home! And mind the bomb in the corner…’.
I did as he said and cleared a space on a wooden chair next to his radiator. The small office was windowless, and dominated entirely by a desk in the middle, which was piled with papers and folders which seemed destined at any moment to tumble to the floor. Thim himself was an energetic fellow, despite his advanced years, with white hair and a confused expression offset by a long woollen scarf which almost reached to the ground. ‘I suppose’, said he, ‘That you have come to ask me about my new theory?’ As he spoke he walked round the desk, picking up papers at random and throwing them, disgustedly, back on the desk or even the floor. ‘I suppose, like others in this institution, you regard me as a mad man? Or have you come to write one of those sarcastic pieces for a Sunday tabloid? I may be a learned man, dear boy, but, gosh!, I ache just as much as the next person.’
‘The truth is”, I said, standing, That I am intrigued by your hypothesis, that the whole of our existence is nothing but a footnote at the bottom of a page. The very idea of it strikes me as philosophically redundant, yet at the same time, who would not deny that existence was – shall we say – not as important as we had otherwise thought? And who hasn’t once had the sensation of missing something more interesting, that our whole lives are relevant, yet not quite as integrated as we had once thought? In other words, just like the information contained in a footnote. Professor Thim, I have become so interested in your hypothesis that I just had to come and hear it from your own lips’
The Professor stopped what he was doing and looked at me. ‘No!”, he said. ‘No, no, no! You’ve got it all wrong! Completely and utterly wrong!’ At this, he threw his hands in the air and stood with his back to me, his nose almost pressed up against the wall. At last he turned around and regarded me with a suspicious stare. ‘Just like other tabloid journalists, you twist your words to suit your own bitter ends, and make me look a fool in the process. I expect you haven’t even read my hypothesis, that you got the details from hearsay and gossip’.
‘My research’, I told him, ‘Depends on facts.
‘So where did you learn about my hypothesis’.
I swallowed, and told him the truth. I read it on the back of a packet of corn flakes.
‘Indeed’, the Professor said, whirling round and facing me, an act which sent the end of his scarf in a wide arc, flicking pages from his desk on to the floor. ‘Come with me’, he said, ‘And I will explain in more detail.
‘And you will tell me everything?’
‘Everything that needs to be said. You will find me harmless, I am sure, and quite safe. Oh, and mind the bomb as you get up’.
The facility in which Thim works is set in an area of wooded park land and gentle slopes. We walked among the trees, the Professor and I, and he explained to me the finer points of his philosophy. ‘Everything is a footnote, that is true, said Thim, ‘If one considers existence as a cohesive narrative. At the beginning – whenever that was – there was but one story, but each nuance of that story has sprouted a footnote, and all the footnotes themselves have also sprouted footnotes. Indeed, there is a line of footnotes spreading almost to infinity, millions of them, like the roots of a massive, colossal tree. The Professor stopped, and fingered the leaf of an overhanging branch. This leaf, said he, ‘Is a footnote. It’s a footnote to a footnote, which in itself is a footnote to a footnote to a footnote, times a thousand, times a million. The fact I have touched the leaf is a footnote in itself. And this footnote – the one about me touching the leaf – would also beget footnotes describing other leaves I have touched, and perhaps even the fact that we are having this conversation. On the other hand, the leaf itself is a footnote to the story of the tree, and perhaps there will be other footnotes describing the millions of other leaves that this tree has grown. Don’t you see? This could go on forever. There are footnotes everywhere, superfluous pieces of information which we maintain merely for private interest or later study.
One could go crazy just thinking about it.
‘Then why do you think about it?’ I asked.
The Professor frowned. ‘Because it’s my job, I suppose’.
We carried on walking and a spring breeze ruffled the old man’s scarf. ‘I call it my Theorem of Constant Recursive Footnotation. And because of it, one could track any event, any thought, any aspect of our living world, back through the footnotes to the original event, the main narrative of the text in which we exist.
‘Which is?’ I ask.
‘The big bang’.
‘Ah!’
‘An event so catastrophic, and so powerful, that everything which happened after it was, quite literally, a footnote.’
‘I see.’
We continue walking and a squirrel clambers up the side of a tree. It gets to the top and regards us with suspicious eyes. I consider pointing this squirrel to the Professor, but I already know where it will lead, and that he would feel compelled to give a commentary on the squirrel’s parentage, the introduction of grey squirrels to the British Isles, the evolution of the squirrel from some more slovenly, ineffective mammal. So I don’t tell him about it. We walk in a wide circle and come back to the walls of the facility.
‘So you see,’ he says, ‘Everything we do is connected, by various lines, back up to the main event and then down a different line to something completely different. A yak on the slopes of Everest munching at grass. A wave rolling up a sandy beach in Thailand. A Hong Kong taxi driver picking his nose. Each event has its own history of footnotes, and we are all connected as a result. Makes you think, doesn’t it?’
I nod. I have already decided that the Professor is a nut. I cannot wait to get back to my car, and thence to the city.
‘The Theorem of Constant Recursive Footnotation’, he says, somewhat grandly, Takes everything into account.’
It is clear that the Professor sees himself as a literary Einstein, that his theories, he hopes, will change the way we look at the world. We enter the facility and I ask him if he has a mathematical equation which will formulate his theory for the uninitiated, but he just laughs and says, Tell them it’s all in the footnotes’. And when I get to his office, that I might retrieve my briefcase, I ask what he intends to do next.
‘Alter the footnotes’, he says.
‘What do you mean?’
‘We need to get back to the main narrative. We need to start again. Don’t you see? Humanity has done too much, it needs a rest, a clear conscience, if you like. There’s too much history around us. Imagine how fresh we would be if we approached each day with an unhindered view of what we should be doing’.
‘And how are you going to do this?
He picks up the bomb which, I only now notice, has been sitting in the corner of the office the whole time.
‘Like this’, he says, pressing the button on the top of the device
Panic! A grin spreads out on the Professor’s face as a clock ticks down the seconds of a half-minute.
‘Good bye!’, he says.
But I move quickly and grab the bomb from his arms, then start running down the corridor to the fire escape at the end. Incensed, the Professor runs after me, his scarf flying, though he has to stop halfway and lean against the wall. At the fire escape, with seconds to spare, I lob the bomb through the air and watch as if sails out of the facility, bouncing on the ground amid the trees just the once, to explode with a mighty detonation, ripping shards of tree and leaves and causing a shockwave which smashes several windows. I watch, aghast, as several deceased squirrels fly through the air only to land with a thud around us, before the smoke engulfs the building, and a distant, urgent fire alarm sounds throughout the facility.
‘Uh-oh’, Professor Zazzo Thim says, standing next to me. ‘I think I might be in some trouble’.
I leave it a couple of days before calling him. His voice, on the phone, is unrepentant, though I have heard through several channels that he has been fined for his exuberance, even if it was conducted in the name of literary exploration. I ask the Professor if he is okay and he replies enthusiastically, that his belief in the Theorem of Constant Recursive Footnotation is undamaged, indeed, heightened by the explosion, although he has received several threatening letters from animal rights extremists over the shocking numbers of squirrel fatalities. I ask him if the explosion was enough to obliterate the footnotes and bring us back to the main narrative.
‘No such luck’, says he.
‘But the explosion? Would this have been a footnote in itself?’
‘Quite possibly’, says he, ‘Although it depends, of course. If someone were to write a story about it, I suppose it would be a pretty major event. But in the history of – say – the evolution of squirrels, it would be more a minor detail.
‘Minor detail?’ I ask. ‘It was a positive massacre!’
We both laugh at this joke.
‘On the other hand’, says he, There has been a startling development. Indeed, the explosion was not enough to cause a return to the main narrative, and would therefore be considered a footnote of its own. However..:
‘Yes?’
‘The explosion itself would be – I don’t quite know how to put this – a piece of punctuation, superfluous to the footnote itself, like a grammatical error in the middle of the sentence.
‘My word, I whisper.
‘More of a smudge, actually’, he continues. Right in the middle of it. And visible even from other footnotes.’
A dry chuckle escapes from the Professor.
‘So what does this mean?’ I ask.
‘It means, dear boy’, the Professor says, ‘That we have changed, very slightly, the whole character of the page. It is imperfect now! And there are no explanatory notes to tell the reader why this should be..:
He laughs again. I replace the receiver and walk to the window of my flat. The sun appears from behind a cloud. In the street, a woman walks past wearing a blue hat, tilted, at a jaunty angle.
Robert Garnham 