“I was just thinking,” said Coyote/Llixgrijb, “that maybe I’ve chosen the wrong realm to live in altogether. I created this physical, temporal realm, and put Brillig in it to experience it for me. But, really, all this physicality spells nothing but trouble. It seems that suffering, ignorance, and mortality are the only things that hold the temporal realm together. It leads to more grief than gratis.”

“Indeed,” said Wolf. “Buddha taught us that suffering and sacrifice are key ingredients in this realm.”

“Then why stick around? I believe I’ll scrap the whole thing and move on to the mythic realm—the world of flow, of determinacy. A world without surprises. I like the sound of that.”

“So are you contemplating destroying our world altogether?”

“What do you think?”

“Be careful, my friend,” said Wolf. “If you try to scrap this world, you may find the mythic world extremely boring. There will be no meaning or purpose to it, without information from our temporal realm leaking into it. The mythic world is only important because of the physical world, and the physical world is only important because of the mythic world. Here, at least, you get to experience the heroic myth of the mystic experience, because death is real here.”

Coyote/Llixgrijb grinned at him. “You’re trying to scare me out of it, aren’t you?”

“Besides,” continued Wolf, “getting rid of either realm would prove rather difficult. Dividing the mythic from the physical or the temporal is like cutting a magnet in two; the pieces will divide into physical or mythic wherever you make the cut. It’s either both realms, or nothing. It’s a cosmic/mythic complementarity. You must have both to have your dream.”

“I think you’re bluffing,” said Coyote/Llixgrijb.

—physicist Fred Alan Wolf in conversation with Llixgrijb, from The Jamais Vu Papers newsletter and book by Wim Coleman and Pat Perrin. Reprinted in Jamais Vu Views along with additional material.

We thought that Llixgrijb was a fictional character, but if you Google that name today, you’ll get about 12,000 results. Some are quotes, usually (but not always) attributed to The Jamais Vu Papers, and sometimes translated into various other languages. Many are said to be posts by Llixgrijb, who apparently speaks Russian and a bevy of other languages as well as English and lives in various parts of the world. Here are just a few Llixgrijb links:

… offering to be a pen pal …

… playing music …

… playing chess …

… discussing software …

… tweeting …

… lurking …

You can read how that came about in our blog of 2012/10/05

CLICK for prints of Coyote/Llixgrijb and other illustrations from The Jamais Vu Papers.