I don't think the minus has much relevance to the number, if indeed it is a number, and not some strange heiroglyph - it seems to be attempting to squeeze some kind of grammatical structure from its limited space and vocabulary...I've been doing something similar myself recently, trying to remember how to write stories again after channelling my creativity into weird animations for so long. I went for a walk along Worthing pier to see if some sea air would help me think.
I was trying to understand how we percieve and navigate our way through this world we find ourselves in, and as I scanned the flat blue horizon it suddenly struck me how two-dimensional everything is. We like to think of ourselves as living in a three-dimensional world, but thats not how we see it or move through it.
For our minds, the world will always be flat. We move from A to B in two dimentions. Going up or down does not add any extra depth, it simply provides more two-dimentional layers to travel on. This flat world view is dictated by our dependence on gravity. Up and down are traditionally forbidden in the human world, physical barriers we cannot cross.
As for our perception of the world, well it appears to be three-dimensional, our binocular vision and movement through it helps to confirm this illusion. But at any one time we are only seeing a two-dimensional image of our surroundings. This is why 3D holographic television is doomed to be no more than a wonderous gimmick (if it ever arrives), everything we see is painted on a flat surface in front of us. You might be able to turn and look in any direcion, but the flat surface turns with you, much like being trapped inside a sphere. Anything that is further away than you can reach is not a part of your world, rather it is painted on the inside of a larger sphere that encloses your own, with larger and larger spheres stretching out like the skins of an infinite onion.
So if the way we percieve the world is two-dimensional, I started wondering what it would be like to truly percieve it in three dimensions. The closest I could get to imagining it was some kind of god-like omniscience, where you would be aware of every point in space at the same time.
It was at this point that I started to wonder if I had stumbled on a profound idea or if my brain was just waffling like some dusty old calculator. Science tells us that we are no longer the centre of the universe, but I think in a philosophical, perceptual and individual sense we very much are.
Maybe I should just get out more...
