“Man is the measure of all things; of things that are, that they are, of things that are not, that they are not.”
– Protagoras
… and whatever man called each living creature, that was its name.
– Genesis 2:19
TO “MEAN” – means also to divide. – Webster’s dictionary
“We are all suspended in language…” – Niels Bohr
The Set Which Represents All Sets
“There is no quantum world – only a quantum mechanical description.” – Niels Bohr
THE LANGUAGE OF A MIRROR: A Polytropic Description of a Many-Storied Structure
In the Labyrinth of its Metaphor : The Human “Scale” 
AS SHAKESPEARE SAID BEFORE: “All the world’s a stage”. Or as Plato tried to picture with his story of the cave: On the “face” of it – things are somehow more than what “appears”… So like a Holmes is to our Watson (who would be searching for the “clew”) – some of us may find that we must ask ourselves again: What to name this “show” that we call life..?
How shall we describe it?
Humans after all, are somehow meaning seeking creatures – perhaps it’s nothing but a game of words ..? One might even call it: “Rose by any other name”… So that if you’d choose to frame it different (were one to frame it as a drama): It’s where the play of life’s performance is “scripted” like the plot-line of a zero-sum game, “staged” behind the curtain of an all or nothing backdrop – and “set” before the gamut of a “limitless” realm of equivocality and equivalence…
And “We” is its common thread.
IN OTHER WORDS: IT ALL ADDS UP TO NOUGHT (but for the language) …
And the devil’s in the details. *
Not this, not that… – The Upanishads
If this, then that… – The Buddha
“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together…” – The Beatles
A Human Scale 
or the “Tongue” of a Balance?
A pan of merit, a pan of liability, and the tongue of decree deciding between them.
– Sefer Yetzirah 2:1
The Squaring of a Circle : The Framing of an Axis
A Many-Storied Structure That’s a Frame (that’s Referring to Itself) The Very Common Thread 
IMAGINING the Hard Problem of Consciousness (picturing the “All” of Language)
“a mirror mirroring a mirror” – Douglas Hofstadter
THE “FORM” of life is a communication with(in) a feedback: In -“formation” turns to language – and language re-turns as information… And in a “play” of this and that (while it is playing that or
this), something like a reflex (with its every back and forth) – further inform-ation “points” to language. Like the picture of an echo in a network of response; somewhere at a crossroad, (the) “all” of in -formation “turns” to language… And in-between (the) one and its other, some “where” between language and itself, like a mirror in a mirror (in a mirror) – we are but as interlocutors in a dialogue.
AN ENIGMA OF UNITY “WHAT” IS THE POINT
THE STRUCTURE OF A UNION, AN AXIS OF MEANING, & A TOWER OF BABEL
“Meaning is the joint product of all the evidence that is available to those who communicate.”
– Dagfinn Føllesdal
FOR INSTANCE PICTURE what it is (that I am saying ): “That” would be the point of what we’re “doing”… So as “ONE” must somehow “be-gin”: FIRST – imagine space & time as the arena of life’s living stage. Okay – got it? Next, having this first image in (our) mind – on the one hand – consider a familiar trope like “the human condition” – then as the “other” – equate that picture with what (our) physical science today might also refer to as “the material world”… Moving forward with this very “common” exercise (of ours) – say we were now to pic-ture our two “figures of speech” – then “weigh” them both as if they were each “parts of a set” which could mutually include one another? So far so good you might imagine (i.e. not a problem – I’d suppose)…
“Who’s on first” – Abbott & Costello
NOW if somehow you can “see” what I “mean” – let us say it’s now because we re-cognize that each of our terms would ultimately “point” (back) to the very same “thing”… So that (the) “what” I am meaning to say is (were it broken down to bits): By being “figures of speech” (belonging to the language which we share ) – they are both the subject and its “object” – as a “thing” that’s framed by consciousness (something like a whole is to its part – would be their “one”); and as a member “plays” its part – they would somehow in the end (by meaning one way – as its other) always point (back) to the “who” (who’s sharing language) – being no-thing but our “what” that’s someway figured as the “one” (that’s “meant” by consciousness)… And if you’d reckon this is so (by having found that we agree) ‘it’ is simply now because (our)“this” is someway “that” – when we’re weighing both these pictures thru our mind’s “I”. So if you’re seeing what I mean – maybe this time ’round try to keep it in one’s mind that in so doing (“making” them mutually inclusive) – we (now ) CHOOSE to somehow real -ize (make in some way complementary) – or to “say” as if we “see”: That what might seem to be a difference (which may appear between the two), could just be somehow ONE and the same – something like a “rose by any other name”.. Which would also mean to say (if we were wholly in agreement), both could smell as sweet… Because accord-ing to our very own LANGUAGE (which some might also call OUR COMMON TONGUE) “we” is the common thread: All because we’re somehow in the end – and a “who” is “what” we “mean”.
“Down the Rabbit Hole…” – Lewis Carroll
“IT FROM BIT”
– John Archibald Wheeler, coiner of the term “Black Hole”
A Mirror of Language that’s in “amaze” of its own Metaphor
A “TANGLED” HEIRARCHY – Effects Which May Precede Their Cause. The “Form” of Interpretation; a Reflexive Bond between Word & Image
“A mechanism can at most, presuppose a mechanic.” – Alfred North Whitehead
EX NIHILO ALIQUID (Something from Nothing): Our “WEIRDLY” Woven Yarn
AND THEN it’s somehow et voila – there you go: And that’s what you call IMAGINATION. And the “what” it somehow means for us – is something just like magic – cause in a meaningful turn of a phrase – one can now equally refer to both and say something like this: IT IS FATE that each of us find ourselves caught in life’s circumstance. “Ending” in a birth – & re-turning as (a) death and with every-thing (else) stretched “in-between” – by likening fate both to one’s predicament and the make-up of the world: In the metrics of a poetic image – man correlates the UNIVERSE.
It’s as if ONCE UPON A TIME – we’re “stuck” – mired in the glue of life’s “unbounded” metaphor (“caught” within its grip); that having suddenly “found” the words, we sud-denly find our wings… And then, it’s somehow just like presto – “appearing” as out of thin blue air – that having suddenly found the words (as if once they were somehow “lost” then un-forgotten), we can now say things like this: Fate’s “circle” entwines us – as if it were the shape of life’s mortality… And like the fibers of a rope, or the forges of a chain – strung together in a “play” of words and meaning; as if “by fate” – we are each encompassed by a “form of inevitability”. A some-thing which is “in and of” itself – that operates upon our (own) respective lives – like the tangles of a net, the closing of a noose, or the twistings of a knot upon its “string”.
“Clotho colum retinet, Lachesis net, et Atropos occat.” – Ovid 
WE ARE ALL within the grip of life’s curious sort of “stranglehold”… And as it circumscribes its metes & bounds for what has, or can be “said” – being ever in the “circle” of its tangle – it would somehow predicate the contour of fate’s constructive measure; such is the “frame” of language. Holding the narrative of our lives within a warp and weft of its own spun-out fabric – all at once containing us – while we are equally “constrained” within a “web” of CHOSEN words… As life’s imaginary form of pass-time – ONE could choose to say: The living of its language –“performs” before our eyes – as the picture which we have… And some would call that consciousness.
*BUT LET THE BUYER BEWARE: Cause when we’re living in the language of its zero-sum game (where “this” may equal “that” – because it’s we’re the common thread) – by running like a “plot line” – the measure of our meaning could run something like a syntax for its one and only rule.**
Cause only NOW it’s in reverse.
And why is that – you ask..?
BECAUSE IT’S “THEN” (when looking back) – as if “to come” as our surprise – while after only having CHOSEN, might we “real-ize” …
IT IS SOMEHOW AFTER ALL’S BEEN SAID (or done)…
SOME “WHERE” in the turning of a phrase: IT’S SOME “THING” like a blade which cuts both ways (or somehow fate’s uncanny “twist”); when in some funny kind of way it’s “found” – that we’ve been recompensed (in-turn) – by an allotted measure of our own choosing…
Until somehow WE are …
Every single One …
Requited by the “tale” of our own respective end. 
AS THE STORY OF OUR LIVES – or as lines from a well known script – our “play” of words has prompted an endless variety of personal responses. So much these days for the proverbial wis-dom which says THE WORLD IS WHAT WE MAKE OF IT.
Continue on to Chapter 4: A RUBRIC OF REFERENCE
Ixion Bound to the Wheel
* Caveat Emptor
** If “this” – then that … (with somehow all things being equal)
the telos of history 
