Nodeshell rescue

It was written this way. I didn't know why. I still don't. But something moved me to write.

I did not know what it was I wanted to write about, and that made for a rocky start.

Insipid, really.

At least at first, it was.

I didn't even know if it would be a poem or an essay about the significance of milk in literature. I still don't know - not yet anyway.

But that got me thinking about what essays and poems really are, in their essences. Then, through some mysterious faculty we all have to perceive things that aren't there, I felt the reassurance of Roland Barthes, grinning at me from beyond __ , now a luminous being with a smile devoid entirely of smugness.

M. Barthes and I smiled together, in fact, upon noticing that Carl Jung had pulled up a chair. This is all metaphor, though, you see, so read it carefully. Look for the essences; sniff them out.

On the one hand, most writers who take their craft seriously have qualifications; But I have qualifications on both hands.

I have no significant experience in writing myself.

I suppose we must all start by writing each other, and only then writing ourselves.

"What do you want from me?" I asked, carefully choosing my words.

Well, to start with, it would appear that my thesis in this piece (and I am as surprised that there is a thesis at all, let alone what it turns out to be as I review what I have learned so far) --

my thesis in THIS piece (this one - not that last one that claimed to be "this piece" -- for I AM THIS PIECE now -- seems to be some metaphor about the anxiety we all experience when we don't know quite who we are yet, just as this piece, the piece that I am now, does. It's weird how even the most nonsensical drivel, if carefully crafted, can evoke strong feelings of curiosity and understanding all at once,

like the hueless red metaphors that awaken refreshed and cheery

which sounds way more creative than anything I could ever hope to come up with.

Now, had I stopped to think about it a little more before writing this, I might have noticed that there's an annoying reflexivity in this. It seems almost as if the text is manifesting a story all on its own, ruminating and pondering itself, and then, wittingly or not, taking its very form from such indecision.

And somehow, without saying a goddamn thing yet -- I mean, not really, just a string of unconnected thoughts, right? -- somehow has garnered enough interest to get a good little story happening. It almost seems to have a point in itself.

But then a point is reached. Not the main point - more like the turning point. The point at which you know that a point -- hopefully a really satisfying point -- is coming to relieve your curiosity about that very thing -- about what the point could possibly be.

We never know when that point be reached; we only know that after it has passed. But there is a point at which it is clear

not that there's nothing more to write but that so much has been cast into metaphor that the reader may need

a break

I'm not satisfied yet though. It like there's a final significant thought - a single sentence, I hope, for elegancy's sake -- I should find a way to include the sentence I am most proud to have come up with,

"Roland Barthes and Laurent Binet were to host me for afternoon tea." It is the sort of thing that was not easy to keep to myself, and I regret not finding a way to include it.

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