1001 Nights Cast

You must be prepared. Always, prepared. You may be subject to inquiry at any time. There are endless possibilities of unexpected tests—not unordinary, not commonplace—which may be administered without warning, and without mercy. If you meet these tests with a blank expression or hesitation, you cannot rely on anyone else’s understanding. You must rely on your own. (Woody Allen claimed he once cheated on a metaphysics exam by looking into the soul of the boy sitting next to him. It is not practical to rely on this method.) This is why we urge you to study, to learn, and to know.

We must also remind you that knowledge—like time, like beauty, like identity—is relative.

We must also remind you that knowledge—like time, like beauty, and identity—is a relative impossibility.

We test you and learn what you know. Since you know nothing, we know nothing of nothing. But we continue, to keep you questioning, critical, and on your toes.

Hence, tests are an unavoidable slice of life. (Alfred Hitchcock didn’t care to offer his audiences slices of life—he preferred to hand out slices of cake. Unfortunately, there are no Hitchcock fans here, so don’t get your hopes up.) Be prepared. If you are rushing to your driver’s examination, do not forget your eyeglasses on the night stand. If you are being tested on physical endurance, you must have spent the required number of hours on the elliptical machine, or your calves are toast. If you are undergoing a test of patience, you should have listened to those Zen meditation tapes your mother ordered you from Amazon last year. Rorschach exams require detachment and a minimum amount of bullshitting. Testing your reflexes requires reflexes. Pop culture pop quizzes call for a couple of decades spent absorbing inane, useless bits of trivia, which somehow take precedence in your memory over your bank account number and your sister-in-law’s birthday. Examinations of the brain may appear to be stress-free, but don’t forget that the magnetic resonance imager will go kaput over any metal hair pin, zipper, or watch gear, so wear drawstring pants, a sports bra, and no jewellery—even most make-up contains microscopic shards of metal, so don’t get made up in the morning, either.

Actually, that’s a good example. Metal. Think of yourself as a piece of metal, your circumstance as a crucible, and your trial as a Bunsen burner—or, ‘fire’ might be more poetic. Trial by fire. We are the ones holding the rusty tongs, clamping the crucible over the flame, drumming our fingers, while you melt inside. We don’t necessarily care about the outcome of this test. We would actually rather not waste our time scraping charred gunk out of the bottom of a crucible. We care more about how you react to the heat, and what might happen when we throw you into a beaker of ammonium chloride. In short, we do not care what information you spit back at us during a test. We like to watch you squirm. And we do like to see how well you play with others.

Really, it doesn’t matter what you know. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word ‘know’ as: to perceive (a thing or person) as identical with one perceived before, or of which one has a previous notion. The OED has never been lauded for its clarity, so let us explain; basically, it defines knowledge as relative (as we correctly mentioned before)—as bending, mutable, malleable, and ductile. Hence, we cannot know truth. If we could, truth wouldn’t exist. (Descartes walks into a bar. The bartender asks, Don’t I know you? Descartes replies, I don’t think so. He disappears.)

And so the term ‘to know’ is deceiving: you cannot know anything, and yet you know so much. You know enough to take care how you use it. You know enough to know you can’t. You can’t rely on what you know.

You must be prepared. Always, prepared. You may be subject to inquiry at any time. There are endless possibilities of unexpected tests that may be administered without warning, and without mercy. The next time you go out for a cigarette and someone asks you, Do you know where your soul goes when you die—what will you say?