Time: Then.
Place: There.
He remembered having read that “truth is in tautology.” He did not wonder who said that. He can only see himself obliquely in a past, a kind of vignetting in the mind . . . what is that about tautologies? You might ask. A tautology frames the essence of Truth–a truth is a truth and big ‘T’ Truth is Truth as a table is a table and a monkey is a monkey. Anything aside, anything apart–what is it that I am saying? Anything separate–separate? Anything additional to this understanding is only an illusion, and too much of any truth speaks of illusion. I remember he said he thinks. “Who says such things,” yes, he thought to himself, I know. Others have thought similarly, similarly to what he has thought, similarly to what he has read, who they are, where they are from, I will not list here, those people or persons who imagine that any truth is ultimately tautology–or restricted by it. What is it about Truth that can only be correctly framed in the syntax of a tautology? Other questions, What special logical fancies these fanciers of logical thinking indulge, thus spinning themselves around and around with their syllogisms unto a dizzying nausea, I know he imagined they could not help but feel. “How sick their thinking must make them, most of them though, never realizing that what they think and how they think is what periodically makes them nauseous.”
He then comes to say that what he will say is to no one present except those in his head, how he speaks to others in his mind, always speaking to someone he knows, someone he has known, imagining her, himself and words he would speak does speak as she does, as others will too–who are they? Who is she? Who else could they be, not so unlike anyone you speak to, this she, that he, who you have the mind to say something to, those others who you always find yourself meeting in mind, testing what you think against what they might say, would say, have said, as time and again you will meet others for whom you measure yourself against, want the favorable opinion of, think things that you then imagine they might have heard and then what they would say not solely based on what you put in their mouths, but what they do say in actuality at the moment in your head, right there in your head, speaking themselves in the words, “I am always talking to you when you are not around,” he tells her; they do say the things you hear in your head at the moment in the moment the very present moment itself there right there as they do as they are as they have, wherever else it may be that they do; yes, they are speaking as they speak do speak, again in your head, everything in your head as it is in his head {in mine as well} “I do wish I knew what she thinks apart from what she says,” he says.
Why do I need to find euphemisms for idiocy. I’m one who imagines that you need to call a fire-hydrant a fire-hydrant if you want others to know what you are talking about. And if I say the skies are gray, I am not maligning the sun, the clouds or the sky. You can call a load of freshly laid dog shit a rose, but it is still going to stink.
I am one who thinks we should have compassion for idiots, but I do not need to convince myself otherwise in the matter of an idiot’s idiocy, I do not need to think an idiot is not an idiot in order to have compassion for him, or to respect his humanity, or to treat him humanely. Those who object to me calling those who are idiots idiots might want to check themselves first.
The Falling Leaf Review 