What is There for You to Remember?

Remember–what is there to remember? To be a member once again, of what, of where, of when, with whom? I genuinely ask, asI have suspected that I might not be doing such.

Renewing one’s membership–to be a member of society or not to be a member of society? Again, questions beget questions, and so on and so on . . . everyone I speak to, everyone everywhere every-when, yes, everyone speaks in cliches, or they talk in one-after-another trite expressions, received, as they are, through the media. We have destroyed the folk in America; Europe has destroyed the folk. The Bee Hive State is now.

What is there to say about being a member of any group? Every group has to have boundaries, of course; limits, for sure; everything within the boundaries is the group–are there such things as categories? We ask, we do, I do, as I also ask if there is a capital ‘T’ Truth, but then I know that there is. We ask if there are any absolutes we can believe . . . categories as there are sparrows outside my window?

All Women’s bathrooms have urinals; this bathroom has a urinal; therefore, it is a woman’s bathroom, no? The in-the-world rightness or the wrongness of any premise has nothing to do with the truth value … all literary reviews are dangerous manifestations of the manias of their editors; this is a literary review; therefore, it is a dangerous manifestation of the editor’s manias.

What is it about this review I wanted to say? Needed to say? All the stories, yes, how the word ‘stories’ is used, used as ‘story’ is used, with the sense we carry to the word, give to the word, impose on the word ‘story’; thus, what is fiction and what . . . yes, a thing made.

Every fiction is thus a history of a kind, every history a story, every story . . . round and round we go; gira, gira, the world turns and turns and turns . . . did you know that the moon’s rotation is in synchronicity with its orbit around the earth? That’s why we always see the same side of the moon.

What is fiction is a big part of what fiction is, of what it has been, has-been fiction demands new forms, does it not? We try to give them, offering what? We imagine we have succeeded. Our ignorance flatters us. There are no new forms under the moon, are there? All things that have ever been thought have been thought in every age?

A thing made is . . .

All telling is a kind of composing, a making in the process . . . thus what is telling about your telling? Interposing compositions; a manner of posing or positioning, conventionally or unconventionally? Fiction is a mask, paranoia is a mask, schizophrenia are masks, are they not? Everyone has to get behind the masks he wears inside; mask is persona in Latin. Every person an elaborate of masking. Personality takes on revitalized meaning. Which is an appropriate fiction to live and an inappropriate one to live, to perpetuate. Are we good or bad authors of the Self?

Every com-position, what gets put, placed, set, now I lay me down to sleep . . . to lay things down in fiction, for fiction . . . every prayer a fiction . . . impressive expressions, expressive impressions . . .  even in paint, or in music, or by dance, each one a thing made, to make or not to make . . . all philosophy, fiction, no? This has nothing to do with the truth-value or the metaphysical veracity of philosophy. What more is there to say? I do ask genuinely. I have forgotten film.

A short story we say is fiction; an essay we say is non-fiction, but how is it that we can say that, or do say that, about an essay, that it is not fiction when the first or the last or the first and the last thing about fiction is its made-ness; yes, of course, I want to say, a fiction is a thing made, to make or not to make would be a question a poet asks–all poets makers. Playwright means play maker, builder, as in wheelwright, shipwright; to wright is to make as to write is also making, although less literally, although literary is a possibility. Literary shopping lists?

I say what I say how I say it about fiction particularly in the way I mean fiction when a story is thus all made up–but then so is an essay, in away, all made up, just as a woman remains who she is whether she is all made up or not . . . fee, fie, fictio fum. What about lists; are they fictions too?

How does this help what I am driving at? Yes, words sit, words run, words drive at as they do drive to something somewhere.

Non-fiction is fiction in a way ,that way that fiction is also fiction; constructively; the words not the things or the persons described, shown, told, said, presented . . . all as re-presentation? What then do I say about how a sandwich is a fiction? Make no mistake about this; all within here are fictions of one kind or another, of one order or another: kind, order, class, category? How is sandwich making not an art.

Ligare or legere as the root of religion. I have been with Cicero on this; I have presented this before, elsewhere. Make no mistake that in the essays, the essays are essays formatively, but are fictions as are short stories herein; which does not mean there are fewer truths or less Truth in them. On the contrary, I do not adhere to the notion that truths or Truth are equal to and synonymous with “what is true” in the basest sense of trueness. Legere as an origin of read, to read or not to read I ask after Oscar; Legere also means to go through which could mean to plot, thus, to mark the course or to connect the dots between two places, thus in a connotation, to link together, or to gather, thus collect, which is ligare, to bind, or to fasten together. The origin of ligaments in the body. Religion is then what? Religion is what helps the joints in the body politic function?

In the essays, that are thus fictional essays, thus like short stories, some of what we expect from whatever is called fictional, some of what we bring as readers to fiction is to be brought to the essays, just as when an essay appears under the heading of short fiction, some of what we bring to the reading of an essay must be brought to the reading of the story . . .  the expositor can be as wrong as any narrator. But for a reason, or what we might call reason, for want of a better term. When it rains in fiction, it is never just raining. This has always been true in what I write; the why I write will not get addressed herein, may never get addressed. To dress is another making, other than making up, what happens when women put on make-up? To make oneself up, huh? Dressing is a fiction as fashion is the fictional.

Fictional essays; essayistic fiction; one or the other a flip-side of a single literary coin; one metal? make no mistake that the essays are fictions in the conventional sense and the etymological one too.