The Golem of Los Angeles

Parable of the Footnote

52 Parable of the Footnote There are those who trace the origin of the footnote to the graffiti carved in stone by Greek and Roman soldiers at the feet of the great colossi of Abu Simbel. others trace it back to the characters painted on the toenails of the courtesans who served the corrupt courtiers of the Chen Dynasty, characters for peony flower and turtle head, silver stream and jade stalk, and of course characters for the mystical lifeforce at the heart of the world, the yin-yang essence that in the moment of climax becomes jing, the energy that will allow an ordinary man to become immortal. Still other scholars say that the origin of the footnote is the great lost Aramaic testament that is known only through the much redacted and distorted Greek of the New Testament. Like the work of the Gnostic heretics, it was known only through a scattering of references by scholars, the original having been ground underfoot by the sandaled heel of time. Whatever its true origin, the footnote has ambitions to be more than it is in its late, fallen state, to restore itself to its perhaps mythical origins as a whole text from which it is a splinter, to be Prince Hamlet, not merely a courtier fit to swell a progress, not merelyapairofclawsscrabblingthroughforgottenseas.Buttherearethosewhooppose such an idea, for without the foot, what will support the leg, and without the leg, the hip will fall, and without the hip nothing upholds the center of procreation, the belly and intestines through which the world makes progress, the arms that fight and the hands that caress the delicate cavity at the base of the spine while the lips make their safari across the lover’s neck and chest. What good the broad back of an Atlas, strong enough to shoulder the world, if he teeters on footless stumps? “Upon the progress fromfoottohead,allthingsdepend.fromthisorder,comestheorderofthecosmos,” saysConfuciusinalittle-knownanalect.“Thefootnoteis the keystone withoutwhich the building will collapse,” writes Da Vinci in coded reverse script written in his secret journals. The Masonic mysteries themselves are a code in which the levels of the order reveal secret upon secret, each built upon the one below. Without the first level, there can be no higher mystery. 53 None of this is a comfort to the poor footnote, who remains crushed under the weight of blocks of text, spat upon and ignored like the homeless that line the streets of our great metropolis. it curls there upon its dirty sleeping bag, ranting and shaking its green bottle. The forgotten history of the footnote is itself a footnote to history, abandoned like the footprints of those who walk on and don’t look back. And the fate of the footnote is surprisingly widespread. in the realm of the scholars, literature has become a mere note to the theory and criticism invented to explicate it. in the parlors of Berkeley, the wild-eyed anarchists and communists still dream of red revolution while the people of China and Russia perm their hair and launch start-up dot-coms. The magi and messiahs who competed with Jesus to save the world, who thrilled the populace of Jerusalem with the magic of flight, with lightning drawn from the sky, with conversions of sheep to dog, all the Simons and the Elymases, are lost in the dust of libraries. The footnote cruises internet dating sites, gazes in pornographic awe at the gifs and JPEGs of women who are looking for a man taller than him, and dreams of a lover who would trample his naked body with her beautiful feet. The footnote ducks when he hears loud sounds, suffers the indignities of proliferating dings in his car’s paint job, the slings and arrows aimed at him by his boss, the airlines that charge him for two seats to accommodate his depressed and considerable girth. Yet his dreams are the dreams of the peasant who becomes the Emperor and founds a dynasty of blood and luxury, he is the worm that turns into something worse, the steel spikes that puncture the tires of the Mercedes, and on his flag is the snake coiled around a leg, fangs buried in the crotch, the bear trap in which is caught the paw of the lion rampant, and the words, almost unnoticed, inscribed in small black letters across the bottom: Don’t tread on me. ...