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World world

A theme park, opening soon along the gulf coast of Arkansas, promises visitors – and investors – more than just memories and a fun time with family.

Luring adventurers to the Land of All Time-themed playground, guests enjoy lily pad accommodations floating throughout the 38-square-mile park, on water and undulating, recycled “terrain.”

“It all started here – everything is from the closed loop, after all. So we just call it all natural,” said Stan Brimmingway, mastermind of the park and keeper of its honorary specimens. Modestly dressed in a smart Tyvex onesie, Stan pets a miniature bull before shepherding the creature back to its keeper. “Back when land was still bought and sold, people were fine with trading money for all of this,” he said and gestured broadly. “So we were glad to just get as much as we could – people thought they were losing land, but look at that view. The water is so much more alluring when its closer to the mountains anyway.”

And it’s unmistakable. A kind of Mediterranean vista, nestled in the Ozark foothills. Whether technology saved this landscape or invented it, it has definitely changed. “And that’s not new – and kinda the point,” Brimmingway said with a glint of enthusiasm not entirely absent of P.T. Barnum. “What is fitness after all other than the result of the effort it takes you to do normal things – otherwise it can be really hard to see this.”

Impossible, he means. Living in a moment most often means being defined by it. Unless you can imagine the Land of All Time, seeing today in context can be simply too much work. But that’s where the park comes in.

“It’s true that we brought ourselves to this place – totally our fault,” he said. “But imagine a glacier sitting on New York, or the invention of writing 3,500 years ago.” His voice trails off, galloping after his ow, quite visible sense of wonder.

“The thing about this is, it’s not only possible. It all happened. Check it out.”

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Shoe strings and dirty sleeves

You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere.

– John Coltrane

And he definitely would know. Earnestness, sincerity, plays a role in anything you do. Being true to yourself at something first, knowing what you want to do even if you don’t yet know how to do it is a way of moving forward. Coltrane said when they first heard him and Miles Davis together, people didn’t like it. Knowing what you’re doing, whether playing, listening, watching, or making, is a prerequisite all around.

But, with those guys at least, we all got with the program soon enough. They turned all kinds of things into art and back again, even music, whether it was really new or really old disguised as new. Without any explanation whatsoever, a character in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor twice refers to “the tune of the Greensleeves.” The song gets mentioned by Falstaff: some claim Henry VIII wrote it. So it was already pretty well known by the time Coltrane recorded it in 1961 for his first Impulse! release, Africa/Brass. It’s a traditional English folk song, with lyrics and everything:

Chorus

My men were clothed all in green,
And they did ever wait on thee;
All this was gallant to be seen,
And yet thou wouldst not love me.

According to Wikipedia,

It is widely thought that Lady Green Sleeves was a promiscuous young woman and perhaps a prostitute.[2] At the time, the word “green” had sexual connotations, most notably in the phrase “a green gown”, a reference to the way that grass stains might be seen on a lady’s dress if she had made love outside.[3]

Ah, connections. It’s funny how you can start nosing around and before long, you’ve stumbled onto what you were looking for. The name of a really well-known tune, supposedly written way back when for Anne Boleyn, turns up all over the place and even rhymes with a concept being obliterated in real time. That’s perseverance. What is it we are doing? What’s the key? Well, Sun Ra claimed he was from Saturn.

“Isness of the was” indeed.