Episode 178: Borges' Obsession-Obsession ("The Zahir")

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist, David Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:16] Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a quick solo adventure to go on, and this one will not be directed by Ron Howard. He's gonna go poop when Granthorik pats his belly like that and leaves without Morty. It means he's going to go poop.

[00:00:27] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, what do you think about Melinda Gates' billion dollar initiative? Yeah, I didn't know about it until I listened to your forthcoming segment with Christina Hough Sommers.

[00:01:35] I had no idea, but when I heard about it, the billion dollars, and I heard Christina's strong negative reaction to it, I thought, why would anyone be opposed to getting money? That seems like... It seems great.

[00:01:51] If Bill Gates wanted to give white Hispanic guys a billion dollars, I wouldn't ask questions. You just take it. Yeah, no, I think... And I say this and I've edited it loosely that segment.

[00:02:07] I'm still not totally sure what the initiative does and why my stepmother is opposed to it. To be fair to her, she did not have her notes at the time. This comes up multiple times. At the end.

[00:02:25] If you are going to listen to this segment, which is upcoming, stay tuned for the end where we find Christina's notes because they turn out not to be quite as extensive as we originally thought.

[00:02:39] And remember, when you listen to this, it was the end of the night and all that implies when it comes to a Thanksgiving where you've been drinking all day and doing other stuff. So we're going to do that for the first segment.

[00:02:55] I actually think when my brother, the David that is referred to most of the time in that segment, he comes out... He's very funny in it. I think my daughter shows pretty well in her very brief cameo.

[00:03:09] But yeah, Christina and I were a little maybe too far gone. Well, we'll leave it up to the listener. It was wonderfully substance-free. They keep threatening to get into a discussion and they can never actually find their way.

[00:03:27] As I was telling Tamler, it's like a break dancer who's preparing to dance, but the whole time that's all he's doing. He's like running around in a circle. It's very much in the tradition of the very bad wizards, special Thanksgiving special.

[00:03:42] My favorite part is when Christina pulls out her huge dick and slaps you in the face with it by asking you how many Twitter followers you have. That was some wicked stepmother shit right there. I did throw a batting practice fastball.

[00:04:03] After that segment, we are going to return to the glorious Borges Bundant Well to mix a bunch of metaphors and talk about what after doing a little research seems to be one of his lesser known stories, the Zaheer.

[00:04:27] If it's lesser known, it's still rich with all sorts of possibilities and ways of understanding it. I'm excited to talk about it. You know what we are? We're now Borges Hipsters. Oh, you like the library of Babel? Yeah. Oh yeah.

[00:04:47] I used to be into that then I started. Anyway, so stay tuned now for the drunken and other things Thanksgiving segment and we'll be back to talk about Borges. All right, welcome to the very special annual Thanksgiving meltdown with Christina Hoff Summers, the factual feminist. And the femsplaner.

[00:05:18] Alarmist. Ready to... Catastrophize. Catastrophize. About the dystopian hellscape we inhabit and Tamar won't admit it. For once in your life you've had some drinks, I don't know what you've had. There's been a lot of stuff. And your daughter's here hiding behind a safe...

[00:05:36] And all her friends have been like raiding my weed. So... All right, so here's the plan. We're going to read... Oh, I don't even have my phone. We asked for questions on Twitter and then those people shouldn't have been on... You got to speak into the mic.

[00:05:54] Those people shouldn't have been on Twitter because it was Thanksgiving and it should be a screen free Thanksgiving but... So I'm worried about my Twitter following. I think that Twitter is no longer allowing people to follow me because it's been frozen for a week. I'm just telling you.

[00:06:10] I think that's what people say when all of a sudden, you know, their star is fading a little bit. How many followers do you have? Oh, shit. Just give me a ballpark. It's lower than what you have. Fewer.

[00:06:28] So what we're going to do is we're going to take questions. We're also going to do a special segment this year and this year only where I'm like we're going to inhabit each other's position. So you do the dystopian hellscape and then I'm going to be the skeptic.

[00:06:43] So just for the record, Christina has been preparing for this and has detailed notes and she's going to have her internet weirdo followers tweeting me after this saying, dude you got destroyed by Christina. That happens every year. You know, do your followers... Your gamergate incel wannabes.

[00:07:01] They're not even incel. But you have very bad wizards. You got destroyed, dude. Your followers. And I can tell by the questions they ask. These are not normal people. They listen to you guys and they say, oh okay here's a typical question. This is your follower.

[00:07:17] I have my question for you. Ask... Oops. Ask him who he likes better Dave Chappelle or that... Can I say that on the podcast? That's up to you. And this is one of your... Okay, this is... Alt-right. No, it's your follower. Ask him who he likes.

[00:07:39] Ask him or her. What are your pronouns? What are your preferred pronouns? He-him. He-him? Okay, ask him whether he likes Dave Chappelle... Look, ask him. He doesn't even know who I am. Well, he doesn't have a picture by the way. This is just him to say...

[00:07:53] Your name is Tamler. He doesn't have a picture by the way. Can we just start with that? That is a girl's name. And how have you coped with that? Like just tell us, be open with the public. It's like I'm like a boy named Sue. Yeah.

[00:08:05] Like it made me tough. Well, tough enough to answer this question. Did you like Dave Chappelle or that chick from Tasmania? I don't know who the chick or the blank from Tasmania. I don't know who that is. You don't know who Nanette is? No. What is it?

[00:08:21] Hannah Gadsby? Don't know. You don't know? See, he's a low information podcaster. All right. So is that your question? No. I prefer Dave Chappelle versus someone from Tasmania. All right. So you give a question. So here's my... Who's the next racist she'll embrace after Milo and Andy? No.

[00:08:39] No? Oh, so you can't pronounce Vietnamese names? That's already a sign that you need more workshops. Andy no. Andy no is Vietnamese. How's he a racist? Oh, I guess in your world. All right. You have to answer this. Would you rather be always slightly sweaty or slightly itchy?

[00:08:59] Okay. You got to report this person to Twitter. These questions are aggressive. All right. You ask a question then. You're not answering. You haven't answered a single question. You're dodging the questions. What has gone wrong with Democrats?

[00:09:13] Why have they lost the faith of the people they once championed? Okay. Who are those people? Oh, like in the middle. Oh, because they're like Hillary, like Northeast elite establishment, like go to Marthards Vineyard and like they've forgotten about them and they make fun of them in popular

[00:09:31] culture and so you know... What are you talking about? And then we have Joker. So who are you supporting for president? Bernie. Oh my God. Okay. Okay, hear me out on this. All right. Let's see why. And I have notes on this somewhere but I lost them.

[00:09:46] You prepare for this. I prepared on the Bernie question. So are you against fracking? No. Here's what I want for like... Okay. Number one, first Jewish president. It'd be fun. That'd be fun. Larry David, four years doing Bernie as a president that would be hilarious. It'd be fun.

[00:10:04] Not as many wars as your neocon, AEI, like let's just spread democracy in the Middle East. No, they're not saying that now. They've changed. You were a... You supported the war I think. Admit it. And then you... So you're a Yang Yang person, right?

[00:10:22] Because that's all the Gamergate dudes that they love you and now you're on board. They love me and I love them and he's the perfect candidate and if you would listen to him and pay attention you would be supporting him. Bernie, that's outrageous. He's against... What is that?

[00:10:39] That's our bird clock. I guess your followers know about that. Our Bernie bird clock. Don't you want someone that's sympathetic to capitalism like Yang but who also is humane? I like Yang. Let's agree on Yang for right now. All right, should we play each other's side? Yeah.

[00:10:56] All right. You wanna start? Okay. My fair lady. So Christina, you're all upset now because they've changed the ending of my fair lady to make it more empowering for women which... So that seems pretty good.

[00:11:14] Why did you get all freaked out because they changed the ending and made it about girl power and she doesn't get together with Henry Higgins, she marches out and everything's anger, anger, anger. My name is Christina's Hoffsummers and I'm the factual feminist.

[00:11:31] And I worked for the American Enterprise Institute. I think that the people who are attacking musicals and trying to change the endings, did you see In Koo Kang's review of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? It's disgraceful. She... All right.

[00:11:50] I'm Tamler and all right, that's my stepmom and she's like whatever and you know... This is not going well. This was better on paper. It was better on paper. Okay. This is just looking at like...

[00:12:07] So there are people here and they're like that's a very gloomy, depressed face right now. They look embarrassed. They look worried and... All right. So let's get real. Melinda Gates has just given a... Not a million. Let's get real. Melinda Gates, is that...

[00:12:33] I don't think those words have ever... That sequence of words has never been spoken. She's given a billion dollars to address inequities, ongoing inequities in the United States. So you are against that? And she wants... No, she wants to fast track... I wrote her...

[00:12:53] Well I took notes but I can't find them. She wants to fast track the careers of women in key areas. American entertainment, government and technology. Fast track their careers with a billion dollars. What's she going to do?

[00:13:07] And I am going to make a factual feminist addressing her and suggesting that the money could be better spent because it's not because of prejudice and discrimination. That doesn't explain the gaps in entertainment. It's not the solution. It's not something we need money for.

[00:13:25] And what's going to happen is I'm going to write this and then I'll send it to you what you think and you'll just say, oh come on Christina, don't do this. Don't do this. You tried to stop the factual feminist.

[00:13:34] I don't think I tried to stop the factual feminist but hold on, I have a devastating reply to what you're saying. I just have to check my notes. Your Melinda Gates notes? I think you should talk to your favorite boys, Yol and Mickey and they will tell

[00:13:51] you, they will give you some way of addressing Melinda Gates and telling her that the data that they're relying on is wrong. But what they won't be doing is questioning the very methods that psychology uses to even get at these kinds of questions.

[00:14:10] In your opinion, there are colleges for the Gates family? Yeah, kind of maybe. Oh, Yol and Mickey? Oh God, they love the Gates. They go to Davos and hang out with Melinda Gates. They're like in hot tubs with Melinda Gates. Yeah, yeah, the Idaho one, Sun Valley.

[00:14:29] They show more respect for your stepmother than you do. And they've helped me. And you should say nice things about your stepmother. I love my stepmother. But stepmothers get bad press and talk about an oppressed group who's mistreated and misunderstood in literature.

[00:14:47] And I want that to be added to a group of people that are disempowered under patriarchy. Because you never hear about stepfathers, think about it. Well you do, but they're usually like molesters and your kids. Yeah, kind of true. Here's the thing I think we can agree on.

[00:15:03] We agree that there are annoying critics, critics of art right now. They politicize things they shouldn't politicize. They make, they forget that a work of art is a work of actual art. And complicated. It's not only about representation and identity.

[00:15:19] Today you made me, she was following me around my house as I'm trying to get ready for Thanksgiving with a slate podcast with podcaster Inku Kang. And I apologize if I'm getting that wrong. The slate spoiler special of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And she's saying something.

[00:15:37] It just like, I don't know. It sort of like makes me a little bit sad because I feel like if you took away all of the Tarantino trappings this could basically be like Charles Bronson movie or sort of like an NRA movie. That's what she said.

[00:15:55] She said that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is like an NRA movie. Well so that's not the part you play. And you defended it and you said I think I agree with her. No, the part that you played I totally agree with her.

[00:16:10] She said it's about the transferring of Hollywood from like the Steve McQueen's to the 70s kind of actor. And that is, it is about that passage. She compared it to the NRA. Answer the question. Did you think it was like a film that was underwriting the NRA?

[00:16:28] Was it a MAGA hat movie? Did you set that up? Did you prompt that? She absolutely did. It was his myth. This is not fair. No, to your Twitter, to your like... And you're going to edit this out. It happens every year. Gamer Bro, Gamer Bro 82 or whatever.

[00:16:47] Like it's not totally fair because she had everything like queued up. He's snowflake adjacent and you've got to be open about it and I'm here and it's an intervention and a lot of your followers, very bad wizard followers want this.

[00:17:02] They want you to acknowledge that there's some, it's a dystopian hellscape out there in the culture. That's what I'm trying to say. All I'm saying is that people are allowed to have their takes and opinions about once upon a time in Hollywood.

[00:17:19] And there are some people who view it in a way that I think is not the right way of understanding art. Although by the way, I like that critic. I like Ngu Khu Kheng. I like her take. I like her vocal fry. Careful, watch it.

[00:17:36] He can't say anything because you can't make fun of women's voices. Except you made fun of mine. It was like some okay boomer stuff going on. I think that... What are you talking about dear? Find your words. Find your words and no slurring. Yeah. So the...

[00:17:57] The Linda Gates thing again? Yeah, let's go back to... Let's fast track the careers of women. What's next on your list? Okay, what? Oh David, we have to bring David in. Yeah, David. And he was supposed to do some tone policing because... Yeah. I've been insulted.

[00:18:15] And he's supposed to also fluff and be the hype man. Fluff and hype because of a world you created and a world you... No, it's not that you... You just thought... No. What? David was supposed to fluff me. Okay. That's why it didn't go well. Fluff it.

[00:18:29] I thought I did. Fluff it. So David, sources, trusted sources have said and I heard this on a podcast that you sent four dick pics to Amy Klobuchar. Oh come on, he's a teacher. You're a comment. You can't have that on a podcast.

[00:18:45] This is right on the heels of your van incident. So there's two things about Amy Klobuchar. They can hear you speak. Have you seen the video of her throwing the binder at her legislative aid? You like that? Yeah. Like that's hot, I think.

[00:19:00] And she eats her salad with a comb, which I like. There's a whole Amy Klobuchar on the corn hub. It's like number one. The algorithm has it go straight to Amy Klobuchar. Why? No, but he didn't say... You're the one that sent the pics. No, the pics.

[00:19:19] Yeah, yeah. No, that was me. But... Oh, God. I have no... Who would you send them to? Who would you send them to? Like Kamala Harris? No. Oh, no, I know.

[00:19:30] No, because I'd be put in jail for like 45 years and she'd get me on my possession of weed. Tulsi Gabbard. Oh, I like her. Yeah. Except for the... No, she's awesome. The love affair with Assad. Again, that's hot. That's hot. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of... Dictators are hot.

[00:19:50] We're a pro Tulsi Gabbard family here. Not me necessarily. Can we go back to the fluffing? Yeah. You're happy you're talking about the fluffing? Yeah. Fluffing up. Fluffing up. What do I did? And what happened? Does he need a constant fluffing like throughout the podcast?

[00:20:04] And now I just want to say that our... My beloved granddaughter, Eliza, who introduces the podcast so people know her. Oh, yeah, I like. And her therapist gave her a safety ball. Safety ball. How do you describe that ball? Eliza, come and tell us. And bring the ball.

[00:20:20] It's a big blue yoga ball. I just want to say I feel very uncomfortable and unsafe in this household and this ball is the only thing keeping me from going insane. Okay, that was a plea for help. And this is all part... Please help me.

[00:20:33] I don't think it was a plea for help. No, because she was behind the ball. Oh. Yeah. So she was... I'm too afraid to come out from behind it. Eliza, can you say that into the mic? Because that was... Yeah. Here. And I want to use...

[00:20:47] Just come out from behind the ball. Come out from behind the ball. Please, please! You can live with Izzy and me. I know. I can come if I can bring them all. All right. All right. So this didn't go that well. Any last thoughts? Okay, last question.

[00:21:03] What is it like to have Tamler as your... Okay. Wait. Okay, this is from a follower and it's a legitimate... What is it like to have Tamler as your stepson and why is it terrible? Oh. It's not terrible. He's the most wonderful stepson anyone could ever have.

[00:21:20] I love him dearly. I just want to... I just... If I could just arrange his thoughts and make him a little more concerned about issues that concern the intellectual dark web. Well, thank you, Christina. It's always good to have you. All right.

[00:21:36] So we're back very briefly because we have found Christina's notes that she has prepared for this podcast. I'm here but I'm protesting. And it's like a whole notebook but a lot of the pages are blank. I would not have been this intimidated had I seen the notes beforehand.

[00:21:55] So here's one. It's the whole note card just says, alt-right, high Charlie. Do you have any explanation for this card? It's not... Is that my handwriting? This one. Alt-right, high Charlie. Here's one. Stiglitz? Stiglitz, yes. I had a point to make the boarder. It's from Gloria's Bastards? Yeah.

[00:22:20] Melinda Gates. Most of them say Melinda Gates. Which... Oh, here's another Melinda Gates. Toot his mantle, berries. Yeah. There was a part about a berry farm that she funded. Oh, okay. Rumpelstiltskin and pantsuits. I had a point about the homeless and it was a killer point.

[00:22:42] So you were intimidated by my notes. Every into Creole. Well, no, okay. What did that say? So I don't want to bring it up but there was an incident involving you. Can I say the word? Yes. I can't say it. Creole.

[00:22:58] Do you know what a dream catcher is? You jerked off into a dream catcher. I made love to the dream catcher. When you were a teenager, you were accused of it by your best friend who said...

[00:23:12] I don't know what to make of it but I put it in my notes. Oh, the Blind Audition Study. You didn't ask me any questions. I just dismantled the Blind Orchestra Audition Study in the Wall Street Journal and on

[00:23:28] the Factual of Feminists and I don't get one question from you about it. Because I've never heard of it. Okay. You've read it. You didn't read it? Well... It's like a behind-the-pay wall and you wouldn't send it to me. Well... I didn't read it actually. It was good.

[00:23:43] And you had help from... Don't say that. I told them I wouldn't say a word. Oh, really? I don't know. Careful. This is a good segue to the Helen Keller drive. Oh, okay. Why couldn't Helen Keller drive? Why? Because she was a woman. I got destroyed.

[00:24:04] You're right, Gamer42. Thank you, Charlie. Hi, Charlie. Hi, Charlie. Hi, Charlie. All right. Hi, Charlie. Join us next Thanksgiving on Very Bad Wizard. All right. Well, that was another Thanksgiving episode.

[00:24:24] I hope you enjoyed it if you listened to it and now we will be right back to talk about Borges' story, the Zaheer. El Zaheer. El Zaheer. Okay. Let's take a quick break so I can tell you about one of the ultimate things

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[00:27:46] Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards. This is the time where we like to thank all of our listeners for getting in touch with us and all the different ways that you do, all the emails

[00:27:57] that you sent us, the ways you interact with us on Twitter, on Reddit, on Instagram. If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us verybadwizardsatgmail.com, you can subscribe to the subreddit, reddit.com slash r slash verybadwizards. You can follow us

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[00:29:46] We really appreciate our Patreon supporters. We're going to soon record another episode for our supporters, our $2.00 and up supporters on dark. We've been threatening to do it, but I've worked my way halfway through the second season and I'm almost there. We'll talk about it.

[00:30:05] Oh, God. And it gets really good. The second half of the second season is really good. No, good. Sixth episode is the best episode like I've seen on TV all year. Yeah, we'll talk about it. So yes, thank you to all our Patreon supporters.

[00:30:17] You can go support us there. And if not, you can go give us a one time or recurring donation on PayPal. We very, very much appreciate it. We put a lot of soul and hard work and effort into this and we don't expect that we deserve money, but

[00:30:34] we really thank everybody who takes their time and money to support us. Yes. Thank you all. All right. Well, let's just start with general impressions of the story. What was yours?

[00:30:50] So when I first, like, I was confused at first. I guess it was a hard story to get into because it sort of switches gears very fast. And, you know, it goes from its first person bore his as he does often, but probably unreliable narrator.

[00:31:11] And he's talking about a woman that he knows who died and then all of a sudden he's talking about the Zahir. Well, well, first he talks about the Zahir and then a woman who dies and then you never hear about the woman who dies.

[00:31:22] So I had to read this two, two and a half times to like actually get my bearings. But when I did, it leaves so much room for interpretation that this could

[00:31:35] it could be a lot of things for his is really giving us something, I think to chew on. I think this is true of a lot of them. You know, they all have this central metaphor and the metaphor is

[00:31:49] it's the thing that ends up kind of destroying the characters. But this metaphor, unlike the others, has almost limitless ways of interpreting it. Whereas the Garden of the Port Forking paths, there's a way to even begin trying to understand that metaphor.

[00:32:10] But in this case, it's just a coin that you can't stop thinking about. It's a more mundane metaphor. But because it's a more mundane metaphor, it is even more open to interpretation than the library of Babel.

[00:32:25] I was thinking about it like if you were just reading it, I don't and you didn't know that you had to discuss it. With somebody, then you might think what was that? You know, and just stop.

[00:32:38] Like a lot of Borja stories, it's difficult. But then once you start actively thinking about it and hopefully talking about it because I haven't talked about it with anybody yet. It opens up in a really beautiful way. So I'm a fan.

[00:32:55] When you're comparing it to other stories, there is to me that there's the storytelling for his where he actually has a narrative structure of some of his earlier stories.

[00:33:06] It's like about a person and this happens to the person and the Garden of the Port Forking paths is very much like that. Then there's the more philosophical, like the Tlaanuk bar. It's fiction, but fiction as an excuse

[00:33:19] to talk about something like a real philosophy. And this one is like neither of those. It's almost a story, it's almost a philosophy, but it's more just about some mystical idea and hints at mysticism and infinity in a way that I found satisfying.

[00:33:43] So here are some similarities I noted with the other stories and also some differences. Like all of them actually, there's this kind of weary defeatism in the prose. It's told with this kind of fatalistic, pessimistic, backwards looking attitude

[00:34:08] that seems like that's his prose style to the extent that he has one. And that's definitely here. There's also this threat of obsession. There is just an obsession that's the central quality of this character, Borges, that we get. And again, like Tlaanuk bar, this all-consuming form of idealism.

[00:34:38] There's like a specter of idealism that's all-consuming where all particulars have lost their meaning and they're just kind of subsumed into this, in this case, this coin or the Zahir, depending on what the Zahir, how it manifests itself.

[00:34:57] There's so many philosophical and religious references to even try to track all those down and what of them are real and important and which of them are red herrings. It's just packed with that. In terms of the key differences, number one, there's a woman in it

[00:35:21] and there hasn't been a woman in any of, or even like, it's not even clear that women exist in the other stories. And you know, you could definitely interpret this as a love story. Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, that's something I want to talk about.

[00:35:37] And then the last one that I'll note, the last difference is in the other stories where the character becomes obsessed, they have agency, they make the choice to do that.

[00:35:54] Like all the people and the weird cults in the Library of Babel or the narrator in The Garden of the Forking Paths. In this story, it is not the protagonist's fault that he is thrust into this world of inescapable obsession.

[00:36:16] Now we can talk about whether that's true, whether there's a sense in which you can find agency in bringing about his end. But I thought that was a little different than some of the other stories where it seems like the characters do have more agency.

[00:36:34] So you want to go through the story, whatever plot that there is? Yeah, we didn't really say we just jumped into talking about the coin. Like the titular Zahir is an object that has become manifest in various different ways.

[00:36:53] It's been different things in history, but it's a singular object that whenever somebody perceives it, they become completely obsessed and they can't stop thinking about it. And that's what the Zahir is. It's been different things at different times.

[00:37:07] In this story, the Zahir is a 20 cent Argentinian peso that for his gets as loose change. Should we just do that opening? Because I think that it's kind of beautifully succinct the way it introduces. Yeah, sure. Sure.

[00:37:24] In Buenos Aires, the Zahir is a common 20 centavo coin into which a razor or letter opener has scratched the letters N, T and the number two. The date stamped on the face is 1929. In Gujarat, at the end of the 18th century, the Zahir was a tiger.

[00:37:42] In Java, it was a blind man. In the Surakarta mosque, stoned by the faithful. In Persia, an astrolabe that Nadir saw ordered thrown into the sea. In the prisons of Madi in 1892, a small sailor's compass wrapped in a shred of cloth from a turban

[00:37:59] that Rudolph Karl von Slaten touched in the synagogue in Corbora, according to Zotenberg, a vein in the marble of one of the 1200 pillars. And then he gives other examples. Today is the 13th of November, last June 7th at dawn, the Zahir came into my hands.

[00:38:18] I am not the man I was then, but I am still able to recall and perhaps recount what happened. I am still albeit only partially boar-hass. That's the opening paragraph. I was like, what the fuck is he talking about? He just jumps right in.

[00:38:35] By the way, I can't not correct your pronunciation of Gordoba because I have family that lives there. It's just my moral duty. What did I say? Corbo something or other. That's just my neuroticism. Family honor. So you're thrust into this, like recounting of an object.

[00:39:05] You're like, wait, what? It's a coin with an engrave. Like what's the purpose of the engraving? Why is he talking about a coin, like a 20 cent coin? And then he's like giving all of these really different examples. What?

[00:39:17] And I was thinking to myself, he's saying it was a tiger. It was a blind man. It was a small compass. And I'm like, what was a small compass? Like what was a tiger? I'm confused. And I think that he is purposefully confusing the reader.

[00:39:34] And he ends that paragraph with saying that he's not the person that he was. He's only partially boar-hass. And I feel like that unit of confusion ends nicely with that. It's communicating something, some feeling of like, I don't know. It already kind of distresses me to read that.

[00:39:59] Yeah, because we have no reference. We don't even know that it's a thing that people can't stop thinking about. We only know that it's Zahir, but it has no reference beyond the different ways that it manifests itself other than... Yeah, so I agree. It is completely bewildering.

[00:40:18] And if you think you're going to get some help in the next paragraph, you're not. It is like... The next paragraph, I was like, I honestly, when I first read it, I was like, why would anybody recommend this story? I don't understand anything that's going on.

[00:40:32] All of a sudden, he just jumps into a completely different story. The Odelina Villar died on the 6th of June. Around 1930, her various likenesses filled the smart reviews. You have a different translation. Interesting. Yeah, I do have a different... And he goes on to describe a woman.

[00:40:51] And the description of this woman is interesting. Very interesting. It's hard to capture what he was trying to say about her. It took me some effort, and I'm still not sure that I know what he's trying to say.

[00:41:04] It sounds like he's insulting her while trying to compliment her. So let's talk about what... And see if we agree, because he gives these analogies of Jews in the Mishnah trying to figure out what the rules are and also Chinese

[00:41:23] trying to come up with rituals and codes and rules for every situation. She is a fashion model, and she tries to do that for fashion modeling. She tries to wear all the things that are right at that moment fashionable.

[00:41:41] She tries to affect the kind of gaze that fashion models at that time are affecting. And she tries to go to all the places where a fashion model ought to go at that time. And she does this successfully for a while, but then in the war,

[00:42:03] she gets tricked into buying a hat that she's told is all the rage in Paris, but it turns out they're not wearing it in Paris, this chapeau. And so that's kind of the end of her. She got conned into thinking that these cylindrical hats were in style.

[00:42:22] And because there was very little communication with Paris because it was being occupied by the Germans, she didn't know, not later, that it was actually like whack, like somebody just lied to her about them. And she pretty much never recovers from that.

[00:42:38] We also learned that she stopped having money and they had to move to a lesser part of Buenos Aires, I guess, a more middle class part of Buenos Aires, and she's getting older. And so she just retires. She quits.

[00:42:57] If she can't pursue this ideal that she's been pursuing, because she no longer has the money and the youth and the access to information, I guess, then she's just not going to do it. Yeah. So yes. And then she just dies.

[00:43:12] And well, before I get to what Borges says about her when she dies, it is interesting this description comparing her to the Jews and the Chinese people who are searching for perfection in every single facet of their life. They want to know exactly how to live their life.

[00:43:31] And that description, it's almost like the... We probably know people like this. It's almost like a religious sickness to be that obsessed with how to do every single little thing. It's like OCD religion, right? Scrupulosity.

[00:43:48] And she is like that for fashion, for that aspect of her life. It's everything to her. I mean, the metaphor that I was thinking of was Plato's forms. She is trying to achieve the form of being a fashion model. And that is what she is...

[00:44:07] That's what she's chasing. And all of the forms, it's not going to be fully accessible because this is real life. But when she realizes that, she kind of... She abandons it. So it is that kind of idealism.

[00:44:23] It's like the perfect is the enemy of good. The desire for perfection becomes paralyzed. So she just gives up. My translation says she chose to retire rather than to bungle besides it pained her to have to compete with giddy girls. But the sinister apartment in that...

[00:44:40] What a honeybee. ...was too much to bear and then she just died on June 6th. Yeah, you want to read what he's... Yes, I'll read at least my translation. He says, shall I confess that moved by the sincerest of Argentine passions, snobbism,

[00:44:56] I was enamored of her and that her death moved me to tears? That was a question. Perhaps the reader has already suspected as much. And I'm like, no, I did not suspect as much.

[00:45:09] He just told me about this woman who's a fashion model who was like super concerned with it. And now he tells me that he was in love with her. It's not even clear to me that he knew her.

[00:45:19] No, she was at her wake we learned but it's not... And seems to at least be aware of her sister and maybe know one of her friends we find out later. But mine says, first of all, it says snobbery rather than snobbism.

[00:45:36] But otherwise, and then says I was in love with her, not I was enamored with her. Which I actually think is a different... Enamored makes it sound like you can be enamored with somebody that you don't know.

[00:45:48] Yeah, and it's because the Spanish word enamorado means both enamored and in love. So then they talk about her at the wake also very confusing. Because it says at wakes the progress of corruption allows the dead person's body to recover its former faces.

[00:46:07] What do you think he means by this? I was so I was thrown off by this because it sounds like, okay, so he's described her as somebody who was constantly changing her face in order to conform to the fashion of the day.

[00:46:24] Like constantly trying different things aesthetically to be whatever she needed to be at the time. And it sounds to me like what he's saying is that when dead, she went to her default face. You know, like when she... her effort was no longer available to change her appearance.

[00:46:45] And so I don't know about the corruption thing that the... Doesn't it also make it seem like she was younger? Like is it just a kind of a makeup thing that they were able to... Yeah, that's what I don't know. Yeah.

[00:46:59] Like I don't know if it's uncovering her true form or the makeup artist made her look in a particular way. Like how she... It says she magically became what she had been 20 years before.

[00:47:13] Features recovered the authority that arrogance, money, youth, the awareness of being the creme de la creme, restrictions, a lack of imagination and stolidity can get. You know, this is why I love discussing these things.

[00:47:28] I'm just now thinking that it is a particular kind of irony that somebody who tried so hard to look good and to look in a particular way never quite achieved what the mortician did. Yeah, right. Right? Yeah, exactly. They achieved it in death.

[00:47:55] It's like somebody else did her makeup and made her look hot. It was just dead hot. Like he sounds like he's saying like I'd hit that because he says no version of this face which had so unsettled me will be as memorable as the one I now saw.

[00:48:08] She achieved perfection in death. Okay, so next day... Or sorry, no, that night of the week, he goes to a tavern and is given change. And then the change is the Zaheer, the 20 centavo coin with the letters NT scratched on it in the number two.

[00:48:32] And just almost immediately it starts to like occupy him but it's interesting the way it does at first. I'll tell you what I think. So just like right after he gets it, he starts thinking about just coins in general and the ramifications of coins.

[00:48:50] And he says the coin becomes a symbol for all coins and he starts thinking of all the different famous coins in religion and literature and history. And as he's doing that, he's walking around Buenos Aires and he realizes that he's walked around in a circle.

[00:49:06] So it's like he's walking around in the shape of a coin. And then he gets more philosophical and abstract about it. He thinks of coins as being not anything in itself. There's no intrinsic value but there, it's an opportunity.

[00:49:23] It's like a gateway to possible futures which you can use to buy music or coffee or a book by Epictetus that teaches us to hold things like coins and contempt, he says.

[00:49:37] And then he kind of concludes this part with the coin is a symbol of our free will. Yeah, super interesting. So that's where he is with the coin at this point. Thinking about it, the philosophical implications of the coin.

[00:49:56] As the story progresses, it will narrow to really just the image of the coin itself. Right. The coin, it's very grandiose the way he is thinking about the Zahir. Right, the Zahir when he's describing. Yeah, it's like the coin is a microcosm that represents something much bigger.

[00:50:19] But then as you say, it starts narrowing. It captures him and then just almost like choking his vision slowly. But let's talk about that free will thing because it's really interesting. Yeah.

[00:50:39] Because coins represent something that you can buy, something that you can do, they're essentially representing an act that you have not yet committed. And he says determinists don't believe in possible acts. There's no...

[00:50:56] He even describes the way in which philosophers describe free will, which is that you could have done otherwise. He says in my translation, the determinist deny that there is such a thing as a single possible act in the world. That is an act which might have happened.

[00:51:11] And so it's almost like the coin refutes determinism. Yeah. He describes it. Right. The coin that's not true because I can use this coin to buy either the bronze record or a book or a cup of coffee. So there's, you know, thus I refute determinism. Right.

[00:51:33] He said a repertory of possible futures. Money is abstract. I repeated to himself money is future time. He's holding in his hand a universe of infinite possibilities. So he sounds excited. Right? He sounds like this is good, right? He's happy he has this thing.

[00:51:50] And the way he's thinking about the coin is... It's not groundbreaking, but it's interesting. It's interesting to think of coins this way and to, you know, something as common because I get the sense that this is just a common coin in Buenos Aires.

[00:52:06] It's like getting a quarter or something like that. Yeah. And yet he's starting to really imagine what it means to have a coin and what it could represent and all the different coins in history and literature and their significance.

[00:52:23] And, and he's just kind of walking around drunk thinking of these thoughts like that's, that's all good at this point. Yeah. He falls asleep and dreams that he was a pile of coins guarded by a griffin.

[00:52:38] Do you know what a griffin is? I've meant to look it up, but I didn't. Yeah. A griffin is that mythological creature that is like an eagle's, I think it's an eagle's head and a lion's body, maybe. Yeah. Lion's body, eagle's head.

[00:52:52] So I don't know what it represents. In fact, there are a lot of illusions to mythology from all over the world that as you said earlier, it would have taken me, you know, a couple of days to try to track down every reference that he made. Yeah.

[00:53:08] And I, you know, I respect Borges enough to know that he wouldn't include a reference to a griffin without meaning something. But honestly it was like, I don't have time to figure out what he means by the griffin. Like.

[00:53:22] There's so, he just piles so many of these things into his stories knowing, I think, that unless you're a Borges scarler, you can't track all of these things. Yeah. You just can't. This episode of Very Bad Wizards of the World.

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[00:55:56] Alright, so then things take a turn. A darker turn. Yeah, the next day when he wakes up, he's just decided to get rid of it. And like I'm not quite sure where it moved from like this world of possibilities to it unnerved him.

[00:56:17] Right? When he wakes up, he's just distressed. He wants to get rid of it. Maybe it's because he was in he was drunk. Now like it's the next day. It's the hangover of the coin. He's like, the coin has to do the walk of shame because poor his...

[00:56:31] Well, I mean you could think of it like think of it as like a stone dorm room kind of thing. You're like, dude, have you ever thought about a coin? And then you're like, it's fun and then you go to sleep.

[00:56:42] And then if you wake up the next morning and you're still thinking about the coin, I could see how that would be distressing. Like, okay, last night was last night.

[00:56:51] Like we had a good talk. We had some good reflections but it's time to move on with my life and he still can't get the coin out of his head. Yeah, and he says he looked at it and there's nothing out of the ordinary about it

[00:57:04] except for those notch cuts that NT and the two. And so I can imagine thinking like wait why did I think like... So then he tries to... He gets rid of it I guess? It's not even totally clear like what happens to the coin right?

[00:57:16] Yeah, so he says... No, he does. He uses it to buy something but he says he wants... This is kind of interesting. He says he could have buried it or hidden it in a library

[00:57:28] but he doesn't want to. He wants to lose it. Like in the way that he found it, he wants to actually lose it. So what he tries to do is lose himself in Buenos Aires by like not paying attention to the streets in which he's turning

[00:57:41] and not paying attention to any of the markings on the houses and going into a dive bar, ordering a drink and paying for it with the coin. Half-closing his eyes, he managed not to see the address on the house or the name of the street,

[00:57:55] goes home, takes a sleeping pill and slept easily. Sounds like my night. So he's like... He wants to forget the whole thing and I guess it doesn't work because he says until the end of June I distracted myself by composing a tale of fantasy.

[00:58:10] Do we want to go into the tale itself? It's... I don't think so. I can't tell that it means anything but what I do, I think, want... The thing that did capture my attention is that he is... He is Borges. He's talking about himself in the first person

[00:58:31] and so now he says to distract himself, he, Borges, the guy who's telling us about Borges, writes a story in the first person. So right now we have what Borges loves to do.

[00:58:42] He's popping down a level and telling us a story that he is writing in the first person. It says it is written in the first person but does it say that Borges is the protagonist? Oh yeah, no, you're right. It's not obvious, right?

[00:58:57] Yeah, he just says the narrator is in the first person. You're right. That's... I filled that in. My desire for... For another metal level. Well, in any case, he pops into this story and the story is just some mythological thing about a guy.

[00:59:19] His guarding a treasure after killing his father turns out he's a snake and he's slain. Yeah, he's bringing in Norse mythology here weirdly so he's going... In this story he talks a lot about different mythologies and Islam, mysticism and Judaism

[00:59:38] and here he is just... So what I got from it at least was that he's trying to distract himself from thinking of the coin and the way that he does it is he writes a story that is about treasure

[00:59:53] and somebody trying to hoard the treasure. So it's like he can't really get it out of his head. Like, he's even in his attempt to distract himself, he's writing a story about money and coins. He also takes some funny maybe self-deprecating shots at himself.

[01:00:07] He's in an increasingly tortured style which might be a way of describing Borges. Borges is pro-style. The narrator praises the lustrousness and flexibility of his body and then in a little bit later he says, I have said that composing that piece of trivial nonsense

[01:00:27] in the course of which I interpolated with pseudo-irudition, a line or two from the Faafsnel enabled me to put the coin out of my mind but then he started to realize it didn't.

[01:00:40] And then he does this weird thing where he becomes confident that he can actually forget that coin. He says that sometimes he felt so sure of being able to forget it that he voluntarily summons it to mind as if like testing himself is like Gandhi sleeping

[01:00:57] with naked women in his bed to test his powers of chastity. He's like, I'll just think of the coin a little bit just so I can show that I can get rid of it. But then he says he overdid it.

[01:01:08] And he also just starts to tell himself that it's just like a coin and he starts getting all these other coins to try to make himself forget that coin. Sort of the opposite of what he was doing at first,

[01:01:19] which is this coin is a symbol for all coins. Now he's trying to say, no it's not. It's just that particular coin and I can have another coin and I can get that. But it doesn't work.

[01:01:36] I like to think that this is a shot when he says that he did some frustrating experiments with Chilean five and ten Centel coins and with Uruguayan vinten. That Argentinian would totally take a pot shot at Chilean Uruguay. This is some South American. Yeah, yeah.

[01:01:57] It's like some internal beef share. Then he goes to a psychiatrist. There's not many jokes and outright jokes in Borges, but I thought this is as close as we get. He says, I did not confide the entire absurd story to him.

[01:02:16] I told him I was tormented by insomnia and that often I could not free my mind of an image of an object, any random object. A coin, say. And then that's how he was embarrassed. Just for example. Yeah, let's just call it a coin.

[01:02:35] I'm asking for a friend. And then he finds a book that reveals to him and to us what's going on, or at least what could be going on. Because at this point we don't know. We have no idea.

[01:02:50] In fact it seems as if he might not have known why he was being obsessed. Even though he opens by describing that coin as the Zahir, it might just be that the knowledge that he gained from reading this book

[01:03:03] is allowing him to describe that it was the Zahir. And he didn't really know. I think it's definitely that. Because he's writing it after the events that he's described. After he read the book. That's right.

[01:03:17] So the belief in the Zahir is Islamic and apparently dates from the 18th century. In Arabic, Zahir means notorious, visible. In this sense it is one of the 99 names of God. So there is in Islam it is said that Allah has 99 names. And in fact, as Zahir...

[01:03:37] Very good. I'm mad. I'm a little mad that I didn't. You are totally... You fucked yourself, you realize. You have blasphemed the name of God. No, you did. That was to God. That was to me. Zahir means is one of the names of God.

[01:03:56] And in fact it is one of the 99 names. And yeah, mine says visible manifest evidence. Yeah, manifest is right. Manifest is actually I think the better translation. Okay. Yeah, that's interesting because the coin is manifest or a manifestation of a more general category of thing.

[01:04:19] Which is the Zahir. But here the Zahir is the manifest of perhaps God. Yeah, I was reading a little bit about the 99 names of Allah and the Zahir name is name number 75. And apparently it is particularly difficult to know what exactly is being described by the Zahir,

[01:04:41] the manifestation of God. It's apparently one of the more mysterious of the names. So yeah, it is... And this gets back to sort of the microcosm, macrocosm. This coin, well we will get to it. It's almost like the coin is meant to represent all things.

[01:05:00] It's something like that. I don't know if I'm saying it right but it's... But importantly, like I should say, he says that he finds in this book that the Zahir in Muslim lands people use that word to designate quote, beings or things which possess the terrible virtue

[01:05:17] of being unforgettable and whose image finally drives people mad. And that there's no escape from it. Yeah. It also says in this... It's not just a book, it's people's accounts of other books and other myths. So there's this guy Meadows Taylor

[01:05:35] and then Taylor tells the story to Muhammad Ali Yemeni of Fort William. I love that detail. I know. Ali Yenimi said there is no creature in the world that does not tend towards becoming a Zahir. But that the All-Merciful does not allow two things

[01:05:54] to be a Zahir at the same time since a single one is capable of entrancing multitudes. And he added that there is always a Zahir. He also noted that Allah was inscrutable. Yeah. I take that to mean that anything can be a Zahir.

[01:06:12] It's not meaningful what the Zahir manifests itself as. It just... Well, what do you think it means that all things tend towards becoming a Zahir? What does that mean? I had trouble with that. Yeah, mine says every created being tends towards a Zahir.

[01:06:35] So I don't know what he means, but I get this sense of this pull that everything is trying to be the most important thing in the universe, but only one gets to be. Everyone's trying to get chose. But it says creature, right? Not everything.

[01:06:56] And in fact, all the Zahir examples are not people, right? Or even animals. Yeah, they're not all people. Pictures of animals. Yeah, the description, by the way, of the tiger is kind of cool. The guy who painted in his cell a tiger.

[01:07:20] He was intending to trace out a map of the world, but he just drew this monstrous image of a tiger with tigers fused in it. The description sounds pretty fucking cool. It was a tiger composed of many tigers in the most dizzying of ways.

[01:07:36] It was crisscrossed with tigers, striped with tigers, and contained seas and Himalayas and armies that resembled other tigers. And you know, I should say, like, the tiger is something that Borges himself seems obsessed with. They come up over and over again in all his writings.

[01:07:55] And so that description of this beast of a tiger seems like that might be what haunts Borges himself. Right. And maybe he knows, since this is a slightly later work of his, he knows that people know that about him. Yeah, maybe, yeah.

[01:08:12] So he says, over and over I read Barlach's monograph, I cannot sort out my emotions. I recall my desperation when I realized that nothing could any longer save me. The inward relief of knowing that I was not to blame for my misfortune.

[01:08:26] The envy I felt for those whose I hear was not a coin but a slab of marble or a tiger. How easy it is not to think of a tiger, I recall thinking, which just seems deluded and also not. Also exactly the opposite of his obsession,

[01:08:41] his Borges' own obsession with tigers. Right. So maybe it's just a joke. Yeah, but why would a tiger be less, you know, like it's a hilarious sort of, you know, counterfactual that I think captures something about, like, you know, like when I'm having a problem

[01:08:56] and you're having a problem, I might think to myself, well, yeah, like I wish I had your problem. Mine is much more difficult. I have to not think of a coin. All you have to do is not think of a tiger or interspersed.

[01:09:09] So there's a kind of delusion there, I think. Yeah, he's already kind of going a little bit crazy with it. And then he says, I also recall the remarkable uneasiness I felt when I read the paragraph. One commentator of the Gulshan Iraaz states that

[01:09:27] he who has seen the Zahir soon shall see the rose and quotes a line of poetry interpolated into Atar's Asurinama, the book of things unknown. The Zahir is the shadow of the rose and the rending of the veil. Like I do not know.

[01:09:47] I'm sure this sounds like an illusion to maybe the Virgin Mary who is often sort of associated with the rose and maybe a veil. But I'm not at all clear what this means. Do you have any thoughts, man? Not yet, although that's...

[01:10:04] I didn't know that about the Virgin Mary and so that does relate to a kind of broader interpretation that I might want to spin. Yeah, we haven't talked about what the NT stands for. Yes, right, exactly. So, but shout out to the any audio book narrator

[01:10:22] who has to read these stories and look up how to pronounce these things because that cannot be an enviable task. All right, so then he remembers that on the night of Teotalina's wake, her sister wasn't there and then in October he ran into a friend of hers

[01:10:45] and it turns out that she has been in an asylum and the nurses have to feed her and all she does is talk about a coin and just like another chauffeur that she also knows. Right, so this thing is going around like contagious, right?

[01:11:06] It can affect anybody who comes in contact with it. All right, should we finish the summary and then go into... I mean, pretty much he just says that the same fate of this woman Julia who became very strange and they had a putter in a sanitarium overtook him.

[01:11:27] So it's a funny way of narrating it. He says, Julia's fate will have overtaken me before 1948. And we assume that this is before then. I want to read this one passage which I think is important. I'm not sure when he's writing it because...

[01:11:43] Yeah, he's not predicting the future. I think he is. Yeah, because he's saying that hasn't happened yet and I can still walk around the streets. I don't have to feed myself yet. That's the last part of it. But before that he says, time which often softens recollections

[01:12:03] only makes the memory of the Zaheer all the sharper. First I could see the face of it then the reverse. Now I see both sides at once. It is not as though the Zaheer were made of glass since one side is not superimposed upon the other

[01:12:17] rather it is as though the vision were itself spherical with the Zaheer rampant in the center. Anything that is not the Zaheer comes to me through a filter and from a distance. Teo de Lina's disdainful image, physical pain and then he gives this Tennyson metaphor

[01:12:36] about if you could understand a single flower you would understand the world. But now this Zaheer is a prism through which he sees everything and everything is receding more and more in the distance and everything is becoming more of the Zaheer until finally it is everything

[01:12:56] that it's the only thing that he will think about or be or understand. Right. And he is here now explicitly appealing to the notion of a microcosm where he says the Kabbalists considered Man of Microcosm a symbolic mirror of the universe. So this idea that everything is contained

[01:13:19] in one small thing, right? That this small infinitesimal thing can contain the infinitude of existence. Yes. He says ideal and then he also has this little thing about idealism. He says idealist doctrine has it that the verbs to live and to dream are at every point synonymous.

[01:13:40] For me thousands upon thousands of appearances will pass into one. A complex dream will pass into one. Others will dream that I am mad while I dream of the Zaheer. And he says when every man on earth thinks day and night

[01:13:54] of the Zaheer, which will be dream in which reality? The earth or the Zaheer? And then this is where he closes it out and he says I can still walk through the empty hours of the street at night as absurd. He can't really do it during the day.

[01:14:10] He says dawn often surprises me sitting on a bench in the plaza gadae thinking or trying to think of the passage in the asrarnama, which says the Zaheer is the shadow of the rose and the rending of the veil. I associate that judgment with the report

[01:14:24] that the Sufis attempting to lose themselves in God repeat their own name or the 99 names of the divinity until they lose all meaning. Which is really cool. That is the phenomenon. I forget the technical name of it, but when you say a word enough times,

[01:14:41] it loses its meaning. And it's also like mantra meditation after that same kind of goal. So you want to read the last bit? You can read it. I long to tread the same path. Perhaps I will manage to wear away the Zaheer

[01:14:59] by force of thinking of it and thinking of it. Perhaps behind the Zaheer I shall find God. So maybe he can take the power away from it by thinking of it until it loses meaning. And then maybe then will he see the entirety? He will transcend the Zaheer.

[01:15:19] But is there anything to transcend beyond the Zaheer if it would just be God? But Zaheer is another name for God. Okay, so that's the story, man. I'll just tell you just, I'll toss out one thing. This clearly is a tale of obsessiveness, obsession.

[01:15:46] And becoming completely lost in something. Perhaps becoming completely lost in falling in love with somebody. Perhaps a more religious, you know, I think there is something really that he's saying about the deep religious call to like lose yourself in God

[01:16:05] which is like a lot of religions say that. Like, you know, that's what you ought to do. But if that's really what you ought to do, won't you go crazy? Yeah, so I think one sort of obvious juxtaposition that you can't not at least acknowledge

[01:16:22] is he's in love with this woman who dies. He finds those Zaheer the next day, becomes obsessed with the coin. Is that a metaphor for the obsession that comes with being in love with somebody? And when you're in love with somebody, it's all you can think about.

[01:16:39] It's all you can't get them out of your mind. It just infects every part of your, you know, when you're at first in love with somebody or maybe when you lose somebody that you love. So it seems at first like,

[01:16:52] okay, there's no reason for her to be in the story and especially the fact that it's so close together, her death and him finding the Zaheer. There's some significance to that. But because like at first maybe you could think of it that way,

[01:17:09] but then she just almost entirely vanishes from the story. She gives a couple little hints of her memory late in the story, but it becomes so. If that was the original sort of engine of the obsession, it is soon generalized into something much bigger than that. Right.

[01:17:36] And so maybe it's just about obsession in general. Maybe it's about, I don't know. I struggled to fit in not only why he opens with her, which I mean, he might be obsessed. He doesn't really say that, you know,

[01:17:54] he just says he was in love with her and doesn't mention her too much. But what specifically does it mean to bore his that this was a woman who was constantly changing her appearance to fit in or constantly changing herself in an attempt,

[01:18:09] in a failed attempt to become. To achieve an idea. To achieve perfection. This is my, I see this as running through a lot of the different aspects of the story is this kind of dissatisfaction with particulars and like the imperfections of life

[01:18:28] and always trying to generalize and to achieve an ideal. And you see that in Teo Delina's story and you see it in her tragedy where she has one mistake that corrupts the ideal and then that's pretty much over.

[01:18:43] It's so funny, like she got tricked into buying a hat that wasn't really in fashion and that completely derails her. I had to connect that with Talan Uqbar which also had a much more kind of explicit threat of idealism as a way of kind of destroying the world

[01:19:01] and also in the library of Babel those people who are just trying to figure out the truth, the one answer, the thing that will explain everything. It seems like Borges there is a kind of cautionary tale element in how he sees this part of human nature

[01:19:25] and human motivation and drive. But again, like in this case it wasn't Borges' fault. He just found the coin. And then you get the sense that there's nothing you can do once you set your eyes on those here, whatever form it takes

[01:19:42] there's nothing you can do after that. So that's the problem with that interpretation which I would love is a kind of criticism of our idealism and our wanting to abstract and generalize and never being satisfied with imperfection. But in this case it is more pessimistic if that's true

[01:20:06] because he didn't do anything, it seems to earn it. Yeah, you know I think that it is consistent with the general, you saying a cautionary tale I think is sort of the right words to describe what Borges seems to over and over again be warning us about

[01:20:28] and in some ways the infinite is this, is the enemy of the human mind and to become obsessed with the ineffable God and the infinite universe and search for the perfect within that is something that we seem to have as a fundamental motivation

[01:20:49] and yet something that ruins us and takes away from our life. The coin becomes everything and everything for Borges fades in the distance, only the coin remains and he loses out on life. You get lost in the infinite or in the idealistic landscape

[01:21:11] and it doesn't even have to take a form it's almost like Plato's form of the good which is just composed of all the other forms it's not a thing in and of itself it's just the perfection, it's perfection itself and that seems like what the Zahir is.

[01:21:30] I liked what you said earlier where so it starts out that the coin is a metaphor for some concrete things all these other coins that are famous in history and literature and theology and also just maybe a symbol for possibility but earthly possibilities

[01:21:49] and then maybe a symbol of our free will and then I forget how you put it but it's like it starts to choke the imagination at first it broadens the imagination and then starts to choke it. Narrows your vision, yeah.

[01:22:04] And I think that's maybe like a good description of these things they open your mind at first but then they suck you in until you go crazy. Yeah, we talked when we described the library of Babel about this the obsessiveness that he's warning us against

[01:22:28] and it seems like it follows that same theme it's just a theme now it's about not about an infinitely large library it's an infinitesimal thing that reflects everything and it sucks everything else out and becomes the only thing in existence for that person.

[01:22:51] And maybe ultimately for all people. For all people, right? Because everybody will lose themselves to the Zaheer if that coin gets around to enough people it's like a virus. Yeah, when everyone on earth thinks of the Zaheer day and night

[01:23:07] which will be a dream and which a reality the earth is the Zaheer Yeah, it is idealism the threat of idealism now like what if everyone is so focused their entire mind and their singular purpose is focused on this Zaheer they are creating a new reality which is

[01:23:25] will make all of the other reality just disappear in a way that I think is consistent with the Zaheer if no one is there to observe anything but the coin then the rest of the universe disappears and the universe is the coin. The universe is the Zaheer, yeah.

[01:23:39] Absolutely. I came across something so the NT Scrawled, scrawled on the coin, yeah. NT and then two. Maybe signifying the New Testament and if you think of this in the lens of Christianity which is really the one religion that doesn't get referenced Yep, only vaguely.

[01:24:04] Yeah, the Rose and the Veil maybe vaguely and the NT vaguely. But not explicitly. Yeah, and now you're going to have to correct me because you know a lot more about New Testament and Christian theology than I do but there is this element of degrading

[01:24:22] of the earthly things in favor of a kind of heavenly world like a kingdom of heaven where there is just this one single pure thing like pure love and that that's everything and that that's what we are all passing through this transient world to try to get to.

[01:24:49] Is that a fair description of? Yeah, I think so. There is a lot of discussion of giving yourself wholly to God in order to achieve perfection so like there's obviously the belief in the metaphysical existence of perfection in heaven but then there is this belief that you can

[01:25:09] through Christ through the love of Christ and opening yourself and taking in taking in all of Christ Take it all. Taking it all. It only sounds gay if you're a man. And through that achieving perfection right so I think that we probably both came across

[01:25:35] the same article in the Paris review is where there's some quotes where Jesus is talking about the first of all the commandments is Hero Israel the Lord our God is one Lord which is sort of a monistic take like there's one big thing and then he says

[01:25:57] love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength this is the first commandment and that sounds fucking obsessive it sounds obsessive and it sounds like maybe the Lord or Jesus is the here

[01:26:11] Jesus is the here and I thought that was really like a really nice way of interpreting this and so when the NT stands for New Testament and the guy says the two stands for the second gospel which is Mark and that's what he's quoting

[01:26:29] he says something that I really thought was insightful which is that in not talking about Christianity and Borges does this often he in a Christian country in a supremely Catholic country he is giving credence to Muslim religions and whatever else like Judaism

[01:26:53] and Islam he's talking about them as if they are just as true as Christianity and in not discussing Christianity he's sort of subverting the belief system of everybody I think it makes sense because Judaism and the Confucianism which he references is still more focused on

[01:27:19] what we should do here on earth yeah and behavior right the idea of Christianity and specifically that interpretation of the Christian faith is in of a peace with the kind of idealism that seems like something Borges is warning us against in a lot of these works

[01:27:43] this kind of obsession with a true ideal and that's just not I think that's more characteristic of Christianity we have a lot of rules in Judaism but there's not an obsession with perfection right and Christianity is often sort of by Christians it is seen as a

[01:28:07] corrective of the religions like Judaism that focused on earthly actions because the belief was that you're so concerned about appearance and behavior that your heart but your heart isn't in the right place right so get your heart in the right place and how do you do that

[01:28:25] you give your heart to God and presumably this will make your behavior good but that's not the point right the point is to achieve this unity with God and Jesus Christ is the conduit by which you achieve unity with God in fact the whole story of why Jesus

[01:28:43] is supposed to have come down to earth is because there was a separation between God and God after the sin of Adam and Eve and that schism was unable to be repaired until a God could become a human and be a bridge right and so

[01:29:01] I like that interpretation that the coin is the bridge to perfection but really what he's saying the bridge to perfection is going to make you a fucking crazy person who no longer cares about the world around him yeah or and no longer has the capacity to

[01:29:19] because they're not able to perceive it anymore I don't I think with Borjas I resist any kind of single interpretation like any like this is one of many that I think is that works really nicely but I think the great thing about Borjas is you can read this

[01:29:43] many more times and come up with totally different I mean one of the interesting things about this metaphor like I was talking about how mundane it is just a coin in this case right so it's almost like the human mind can take anything and

[01:30:01] it will and and no matter what it is you will be drawn you can be drawn at least towards this abstraction this this quest for perfection or idealism that gets in the way of so it's in some ways a metaphor for obsession itself as you alluded to

[01:30:21] earlier it is the object itself is less important than the obsession or the quest it can manifest itself in many forms so maybe Christianity is one of them but it's definitely not the only one this is something that's just so part of human nature it's

[01:30:45] built into us that yeah there's also this thing that this like only now have I like has become clear to me what I was trying to to think of earlier about the difference between his obsession with the Zahir and Teotelina and her obsession and the Jews and the

[01:31:09] Chinese and their obsessions there is something that it's very complicated to try to live a perfect life as a fashion model there are a lot of moving parts there is a complexity to all of the things that you have

[01:31:27] to do all of the things that you have to do to be a perfect Jew all of the things that you have to do to be a perfect confusion focusing on the one kind of makes things a lot easier right it is now now I can

[01:31:41] I'm not running the risk of getting caught into wearing a stupid hat when I wanted to be fashionable I can solely focus on the one thing and this makes everything easy right so like I'm just going to focus on this one thing and he's never even though

[01:31:55] he talks about how he's uh it's going to overtake his life and he can no longer feed and dress himself and he won't even know whether it's morning or evening he will not know who he was he's never negative about it he's never like rejecting it

[01:32:11] he's always like kind of neutral and kind of like well he's obsessed so he can't knock the Zaheer the Zaheer is still like this cool thing like he's not saying like well he goes to a psychiatrist to try to rid himself of it and

[01:32:27] I think once he reads the book he says like there's nothing I can do yeah and so there is this kind of resignation but he says to call this prospect terrible would be fallacious so he's isn't it, I thought the thing that's fallacious

[01:32:43] is to call it his future because it won't be him anymore it's he'll no longer have his identity but he's resigned yeah you're right there's something about identity that he's talking about and he says one might as well speak of the terrible pain endured by an anesthetized

[01:32:59] man when his skull is open because he will lose himself which is often you know in mysticism of all sorts whether it's Kabbalism Sufi, Muslim or Gnosticism losing yourself in that infinite is the solution you're becoming one with everything and so you're not you

[01:33:19] so it doesn't matter that I can't eat or dress myself like that's beside the point and it's interesting that that's the goal of a lot of these mystical practices but you know with Buddhism is to recognize that you're all things and no self although it's a little different

[01:33:39] because you're not trying to become like a single thing right you're a drop in the ocean you know Borges in his story of the LF he also talks about a spot in someone's basement where you can see the entire universe so he's really into

[01:33:59] the microcosm like the being that represented in a small thing like infinity being represented in a small thing so you're not a drop of water in the ocean that drop is the entire ocean right like you are becoming the entirety of existence and that's the mettenison

[01:34:17] thing here yeah if you could understand a flower you could understand the whole you know that's the temptation yeah right right and that's the narrowing of imagination too yeah yeah you're right it's losing yourself in a different way it's escaping the self

[01:34:33] you know plenty of people have written about this right Bob Meister actually wrote some nice papers about this that the desire to escape the self seems you know it seems like the human condition is sometimes terrifying because we are this thing, this self

[01:34:47] and we want to escape it and we do it in various ways Bob Meister would argue that you know drinking and sex are the ways of escaping the self and this is just a very explicit you know way of losing the self it's very focused

[01:35:05] yeah and I know I've made this point but it's in these other cases and even in these the metaphors that we're describing a person makes a choice to do it and in this case a person just gets a coin now I suppose that could represent you stumble on

[01:35:23] some book of philosophy that just consumes you and you can't help it or you are born into a certain religion that emphasizes this yeah there is this tension because he talks about the coin representing free will but then the coin has essentially infected him so he's like

[01:35:45] oh yeah free will is a thing right like and this coin represents all of the world is open to me and the determinists are wrong this coin represents free will but the whole time he's getting sucked in in a way that's completely out of his control

[01:36:01] yeah and it seems like that was the way like he can try things like writing that story but it's they are not going to work and at a certain point he realizes that there's nothing more he can do except give in to the coin and that giving in

[01:36:19] I think is that like you know Islam means submission in Christianity you break your will to become the will of God it's that giving in that he's I think in some way he's just giving into the coin and I think that's something that Bohr has

[01:36:37] maybe doesn't want people to do is to give in to retain their interest in particular things and not just general abstract single ideal things so and you know he's definitely writing this at a time where that was a big you know like Isaiah

[01:36:57] Berlin I mean I was thinking we've never done the hedgehog and the fox right no we haven't I would that would be great it's a little long but it would be great to do but you know the idea behind that is the hedgehog knows one thing the fox

[01:37:13] very well the fox knows many things and I think Bohr has is more of a fox in this case and worried about hedgehogs that single-minded obsessive focus because I think people associated both Stalinism and fascism with this kind of idealistic pursuit even at a political level I think

[01:37:37] this is something that is concerning Bohr has yeah and he's never overtly political but it could very well be that he is saying something political you know it also seems as if he is tempted by the one he's a he's a fox who's tempted by the power

[01:37:55] of the hedgehog right he in the LF that finding the little thing in the basement that lets him view the entirety of the universe and all of existence is tempting right losing yourself in the coin is tempting wandering the halls of the library of Babel

[01:38:13] is tempting him there is something that is calling him the ineffable the infinite is really seems to be calling Boris because he writes so much about it but he is objectively seems like not want to give into that in a

[01:38:27] weird way he is giving into it by writing these stories I don't know I mean his character is giving into it the person he calls Bohr has is giving into it but yeah I get the sense that he doesn't want to but that he feels

[01:38:39] the siren call of it you know maybe his stories are in our ways to tie himself to the master something oh my god that's in he is describing the he's describing writing a story within this to distract himself right and maybe that's exactly what Bohr

[01:38:57] is doing maybe that's what this whole story is yeah all of his stories are just trying to distract himself from the the awesomeness in the old timey sense of the word of the infinite he's just writing stories to distract himself that's cool yeah alright

[01:39:17] we always get a little giddy at the end of the episode man I wish you were still around oh boar has have him on the podcast we should do a seance I mean it was your mind it could I have more open to some of those

[01:39:39] weird things that I ever have been in my life still not that we're gonna have to talk about that alright well you open yourself I'm gonna go stare at my 25 cent coin for the rest of the evening to try to escape my existence

[01:39:55] now you have a puppy now you don't need oh yeah that's right can't escape myself and the puppy life is awesome until the puppy dies alright join us next time on very bad wizards