“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: The Poly-Tropic Description of a Many-Storied Structure
A Labyrinth of its own 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”… Where-fore like a Holmes is to our Watson (who would be searching for a “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 but a meaning making creature – perhaps its 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 like 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
The Mirror of Language:
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 as the Framing of an Axis
The Many-Storied Structure that’s a Frame that’s Referring to Itself An Infinite Regression to the Mean – 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
A STRUCTURE OF UNION, AN AXIS OF MEANING, AND 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” – and 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” – and “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): Being “figures of speech” (by belonging to a language which we share ) – they are both our subject and its “object” – as the “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 our “one” (that’s “meant” by consciousness)… And if you’d reckon this is so (by having found that we agree) – “it” is only NOW because (our) “this” is someway “that” – as we’re weighing both these pictures thru the 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 equally in-clusive) 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 could appear between the two), may 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”
The 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 no-thing): 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” with 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 metric of a poetic image – man correlates the UNIVERSE.
AN EVENT “HORIZON” 
It’s as if ONCE UPON A TIME – we’re “stuck” – mired in the glue of life’s “immeasured” 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 imag-inary 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 – that after only having CHOSEN might we “real-ize” …
It’s 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 it is – 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: THE RUBRIC OF REFERENCE
Ixion Bound to the Wheel
* Caveat Emptor
** If “this” – then that … (with somehow all things being equal)
