Primordial: An Abstraction

21

Metaphysics.

Translation: science that is aware of itself as such.

This certificate of existence hemorrhages like a stuck thunderpig. It loses momentum the moment it begins to pick up speed. Reality is only real by way of the art of misperception and disavowal. I will be the first human being to live forever. All of the (Big) Others will do likewise. Muscle memory is an illusion as memory in general, corporeal or cognitive, is deceitful, if not treacherous; ultimately that flexed bicep has nothing to compare itself to, no prototype, no former, weaker, less vascular embodiment to scrutinize in the mirror. All old, expensive colleges do the same thing: the sharp tips of their administration buildings and church spires tear holes in the sky that relinquish the goat’s milk of Paradise. These observations transcend mere exuberance. As a child I enjoyed moments of isolation and lackluster cant. Tabula rasa. I own eight Bunsen burners, twenty-six abacuses, forty-one protractors, and a deranged Grizzly bear. Tabula rasa. I avoid anaphora and aporia like the plague. And yet they plague me. In mind. On paper.

I have prelapsarian tendencies.

Viz., I am a firm and sagacious believer in the narrative of failure.

Narrative as thoroughbred fiction. Narrative as lived experience. Narrative as desire and production and the death of meaning.

I have been told that my rictus grin reminisces a scar. This scar is essentially a toolkit for existence.

It takes a long time to figure out how machinery works, but once you accomplish a rudimentary understanding of the machinery, you are in a good position to break that machinery. It doesn’t matter if you put it back together. The option for destruction lingers like a forsaken ovule.

As the reviews editor for a prominent academic journal, I receive many queries.

As a human being, I receive many queries.

Even when I retreat to liminal, would-be secure interstices, the queries continue to roll in.

It is my privilege and my duty not to answer anybody.

Unlike rhetorical devices, answers are overrated.

Answer a question and sooner or later another question will air its dirty laundry.