“All the modern things…have always existed. They’ve just been waiting for the right moment.” ~Björk (“All the Modern Things”)

“Short’s the best position they is.” ~Tobias Wolff, “Bullet in the Brain”

The Okalla County Ferris Wheel

There is beauty in a true assertion. It is an elegant certainty, born of tautology and self- assurance, knowing no need for a better answer nor a reason beyond the feeling. This is the sort of assertion baseball enthusiasts make when they insist that baseball is a perfect game. “Perfect,” of course, is a word which is always doomed to fail. Baseball isn’t free of flaw, and the rules and equipment of the sport are constantly adapting towards a better version of the game. The perfection of baseball isn’t found in the flawlessness of it, but rather in its true assertion. For this reason, it’s reasonable to say that baseball is a game which was waiting to be discovered. There is something in Megana, too, which was also waiting to be discovered. It is the Ferris Wheel on the fairgrounds in Pine Bluff, Oconomowoc (Ockney) – the one featured in my 76-page novella The Midway. There are two things which are likely to jump off the page when a reader encounters the Ferris Wheel in The Midway: First, Megana is a fictional nation-continent of 400 million people located somewhere other than Earth; and second, Ferris Wheels are a late 19th century American invention which certainly did not occur in nature and even more certainly cannot be found on other planets. Yet I have written a story where a Ferris Wheel can be seen, as clear as day, in the middle of a story set on another planet, as if there is nothing at all strange about the fact. And as I rely on the English language to tell stories set on another world, it seems as though a line is crossed when things get too specific. As I attempt to explain my rationale, I will also attempt to explain my rules for the ontology of Megana as well. Because, if I can convince you that the county fairgrounds in Pine Bluff, Ockney, are indeed the home of a Ferris Wheel, then I may as well go a step further and insist that the rest of my story-world is consistent as well—that what I present in Megana is, as well as I can render it, real. The topic at hand in this essay is the philosophic concept of ontology, and it will matter greatly as I try to explain the sense of reality I am presenting in my fictional world of Megana. “Ontology” is a Greek word with a surprisingly simple definition: Ontology is the sense or agreement about what exists. It’s like the official list of rules and definitions of the acceptable equipment in a sport. If something is real, it agrees with this list of rules and equipment for reality. If it doesn’t, then it needs to be set aside as unreal. So this is the ontological question: what is and what is not. A fun example of what a good ontological discussion looks like can be seen in episode 10 in season 3 of the Comedy Central cartoon South Park. It is called “Korn’s Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery.” The title somehow tells you everything you need to know in order to set up its premise, as the show’s central characters, a group of fourth-grade boys, find themselves in a Hanna-Barbara-esque spooky mystery which somehow involves the late 90s heavy rock band Korn. As the group is about to solve the Scooby-Doo-like mystery, they stop to squabble about whether their spooky adversaries are “pirate ghosts” or “ghost-pirates.”

… David: “They’re not pirate ghosts, Jonathan, they’re ghost-pirates. Jonathan: Huh? David: “Pirate ghost” would suggest that a pirate has died and became a ghost; but a “ghost- pirate” is a ghost that later made a conscious decision to become a pirate. …

In my opinion, the spooky beings were pirate ghosts and Korn’s frontman Jonathan Davis happened to be using the right terminology. However, in the end, they were neither pirate ghosts nor ghost pirates: they were members of the Harlem Globetrotters. As philosophers, we should observe the value of the nuance in David’s delineation. There is a difference between a ghost-pirate and a pirate ghost. The best part of this joke is that we, the members of the South Park audience, are not going to need to make this distinction for any reason. We don’t care if they are pirate ghosts or ghost-pirate since neither are real. In fact: nothing we are watching is real! Yet the story comes to a screeching halt while the guest characters pause to sort it out. Strictly speaking, “ghost” and “pirate” are not ontologically sound concepts either. A person may conduct piracy, but this does not inherently bestow them with the full battery of “pirate” attributes. Hijacking a luxury yacht off the coastal waters of Turks and Caicos in late fall of 2019 will not automatically give you a peg leg and put a parrot on yer shoulder. Putting on a black tri-fold hat and an eye patch will not also give you wooden teeth and scurvy. And however we all might feel about the supernatural, to be strictly ontological (reasonable, sensible, honest…): dying does not make you a ghost because ghosts do not exist. The reason this matters is, as fiction readers/watchers/listeners, we believe everything. It’s not a mistake or a weakness, it’s a necessary tool in translating out of the synthetic reality of the fiction we are observing. We do this by employing something we call “The willing suspension of disbelief.” You’ll hear this term thrown out in defense of a massive plot hole in someone’s favorite TV series, perhaps. But the use of the tool is indispensable. It’s what lets a reader read the word “pirate” and unconsciously instantiate it as their understanding of the universal concept pirate. You know the one, right reader? The one with scurvy, wooden teeth, an eye patch and a parrot…

Anna: What did the pedantic pirate say when his friend told him both of his shoes is dirty? Kelcie: What? Anna: Arr!!!

Well, don’t feel strange about it, because we all is doing it…Sorry, we are all doing it. Fiction is an aesthetic concept which, amazingly, extends even further than language. It is immersive, comprehensive, enduring and elastic—it is an illusion which seems real. Because of this fact, I think it is important for a fiction writer to obey the highest degree of ontological fidelity as possible. Because what good is a character who can fly when all they’re doing is cheapening the significance of gravity? And if a character is immortal, why should we empathize with their pain? Ferris Wheels are real. To ride one is to be at least mildly reminded of the significance of gravity. They are named after their inventor George Washington Gale Ferris Jr.. But essentially, “Ferris Wheel” is an English Language term. By sound, a better word could not have been found to name them. The very word “Ferris” rings the same bells as “air,” “iron” and “firm;” and of course: “fair.” If Elan Wolfgang von Dethtrapp had invented the contraption, we would surely have another name for the amusement ride. As fiction writers employing them in other worlds, we could call it something else, but to do so would be to translate it, needlessly avoiding the awkward knowledge of where the term is coming from, and thus requiring our readers to translate it back. It might seem necessary to say “Yes: ‘Ferris Wheel’ is a relic of our particular, 21st century English-language and, by extension, our Western culture; my use of the term betrays my earth-bound ontological paradigm.” But to skip all of that, I think we should just say “Ferris Wheel” and believe there is a reason for its presence.1 This, I believe, is what Björk was aiming at in her song “All the Modern Things.” From the right perspective, there is a marriage between the Realist perspective that says “all things pre- exist as forms” and the Nominalist perspective that says “all things are one-off instances which are arbitrarily affixed the same name.” What Björk and I would like to say is: “Those one-off things have a place in the world, and when they arise, they may as well be given their right name.”

1 Perhaps this is necessary, to some degree. Perhaps I need a defense of the likelihood that a Ferris Wheel would, could and should be created by living beings on another planet. To tackle this challenge, one would first have to defend and explain the insight of a wheel. It would be necessary that I say the concept of a wheel is found within the recognition of the concept of an axle. The concept of rolling is omnipresent anywhere with a spherical rock and a hill. The potential of recursive, wheel-like rolling is found in nature also, within a stripped log at the top of a slope. But a wheel requires an axle and the axle which requires invention. The axle harnesses the rolling action of the object by pairing it teleiophilically with another, otherwise immobile, object; this object is moved recursively by the wheel and axle. Imagine a person devising a wheelbarrow from the crudeness of a round block of wood with two solid pegs coming out of its center. The peg, perhaps, is the innermost darkened ring of a block of birch stump which the inventor noticed had stayed in the center while he or she rolled the cylinder. This is the genius of the wheel as a concept: it is the recognition of the presence of two things coming together and existing as one. The wheel and axle are for and around one another; surrounding-and-absent-for one another; serving as the yin and yang of rotation and stability—of motion and stillness. Apropos, once a centrally-placed axle is recognized as something different from the wheel around it, the primary problem of friction vs. fixation arises, to be solved by simple ingenuity. From there, secondary and tertiary applications are found through trial, error and style. Eventually, as modern people tend to do, someone would find a way to incorporate this into something fun. I feel like I could make a case for the universality of a Ferris Wheel. With the footnote on the previous page, perhaps I’ve taken a descent swing at it. But to advance my thesis on Megana, I would like to pose this intriguing question: Could two civilizations, arising in comparable conditions and developing similar strategies for survival, both invent baseball? Here is one of the delightful features of baseball that makes it so special for the true fans of the game: in every at-bat, there is a game-within-the-game. At the level of major league baseball, a pitcher has an immense amount of control over where he throws the ball and at what speed he throws it. Likewise, any major-league batter is such a talented hitter that if they know beforehand what kind of pitch they will see and where it will be located, they can hit it anywhere they want. Based on the situation, a pitcher is more likely to throw certain types of pitches, and also aim for certain specific locations. The batter, knowing this, will do their best to predict it. The result of this is the game-within-the-game known as “the pitch count.” A typical fan might see a 3-0 or a 1-2 on the bottom of their screen and think nothing of it. But given the situation of the game, it matters greatly. Another beautiful feature of baseball is the space between each base. The distances are not accidental: they were honed through experimentation and practice for the first 30-or-so years of the sport. What has resulted is this special feature: if a ball is fielded anywhere within the infield, the batter is almost certainly going to be thrown out. Meanwhile, if the ball is hit into the outfield without being caught, the batter will almost certainly reach first base safely. This is due to the distance between home and first vs. the speed of the batters and the time it takes to field the ball. What results is an instantaneous realization for both the players and the spectators about what ought to happen in the event of a hit ball. And with this collective consciousness hanging in the air about what is written – what will happen unless fate intervenes – an outcome which differs from expectation is usually quite meaningful. On a shallow fly with two outs and a runner on first, for instance, everyone expects an inning-ending outfield put-out. But when the ball hangs long enough that it “should” be caught but not long enough for the deep-playing centerfielder to actually range in and make the catch—infielders scrambling helplessly to fill the gap which the ball seems to be willing itself to land in—it seems extraordinary when the ball hits the grass after deflecting off the shortstop’s glove, allowing all base runners to safely reach base.2 This is the glory of baseball. Because when that baserunner on first, running on contact with two outs, slides into home to tie the game – to win the game; what have you – it seems at once that it shouldn’t have happened and yet was meant to happen. The beauty of baseball is in its assertion. In how everyone knows what’s happening as the action unfolds. In the feeling of taking your favorite position on the field, remembering every grounder that’s come your way in every inning of you’ve played, epitomized by the one you just speared and threw over to first. There is a continuity between each game of baseball, arising

2 The shortstop is the player who covers the gap between 2nd and 3rd on defense. The 2nd baseman plays in the same gap between 1st and 2nd, and they are known as the middle infielders. I would guess that 99% of the versions of baseball involve two middle infielders, although probably 10% or less use the strange term “shortstop.” through its simplicity and its routine. This doesn’t make it boring, it makes it more significant. It gives rise to some eternal essence, persisting everywhere and waiting to happen. This is the fun and the challenge of writing for a world which is both pure fiction and grounded in a strict ontology. It’s impossible to know whether or not you as a writer are getting it right. But when you take a chance and make an assertion, saying what you believe is happening in your best terms, it will cause you to search for and rely upon this essence in your story. This is an existential experience and it transcends fiction. Stories of regular fiction, which use imagination as a way to avoid the bounds of reality, become forgettable when the only thing novel about them is that they are novel. Or as Tobias Wolff writes: “He did not remember when everything began to remind him of everything else.” But a story which shares the attribute of baseball which draws upon the truest parts of the sport, a genuine story will draw on everything essential about the world. This kind of creation is one which creates through connection rather than differentiation. Likewise, when a story built around the essential things in the people and the places involved in the story, it gives the reader a chance to see both worlds—the world of fiction before them and the world of truth within them. Things exist in Megana because they do. As well as I can make it, everything there is meant to be consistent, intentional, and above all: possible. It is also, as well as I can render it, and as well as I can hope for it: real. There will be instances where a relic of our human experience will appear in this other-worldly environment. Instead of seeing this as a problem, I see an opportunity—To gain a parallax of perspective on both places. And to recognize how our experiences might translate to other places and times. Perhaps this exercise will help us see the necessity of everything, and maybe even those essential elements within which don’t belong to a single, one-off instance, but to the full reach of life throughout the cosmos. Where it hid, waiting for the right moment to happen. If we could expect the people of Megana to invent the wheel, it’s a small, gracious step to assume they would also devise a Ferris Wheel. Because, when people are in need of a mechanical device for lifting people up in the air for a casual and comfortable view of the world around them, the Ferris Wheel is the best design they is.

Kevin Umhoefer October 26th, 2019 First Basemen

Tobias Wolff, “Bullet In the Brain” Published in The New Yorker on September 25th, 1995. Available to read through this link: https://wordsunlimited.typepad.com/files/bullet.pdf

(please read it, his short story is the same length as this essay)