a tale of James and Elizabeth's failure to see unerringly

Can’t you just settle down.

 

Er...

 

Instead of upsetting everyone, try fitting in, try being more amenable.

 

Amenable?

 

Accommodating.

 

We like our big words, don’t we?

 

Friendly, if you prefer.

 

In other words, you want me to change.

 

Change? If you like, but I wasn’t thinking of it that way.

 

No?

 

More like rediscovering the gentle man one suspects is lurking within.

 

Gentleman. No. Definitely not. Not a chance.

 

You prefer to be an enfant terrible?

 

I prefer to be nothing of the sort.

 

Huh?

 

These are your labels, not mine. You seem to feel the urgent need to say I’m this or that. To box me under a convenient description. I wonder why. I wonder why instead of allowing me to be myself, instead of seeing me as a manifestation of the infinite in human form, you insist on thinging me, QR coding me with your all too facile epithets.

 

Facile epithets?! Look who’s the one using the grandiloquent words.

 

Too true. Meeting like with like, whereas in fact life is infinitely simpler, infinitely less definable, infinitely...

 

Infinitely what?

 

Not x marks the spot, whatever x, the spot, or things may seem to be.

 

So you’re giving yourself an existential licence to ignore all social conventions, to do as you will, to please yourself in the name of “infinity”. I am infinite spirit, i am uncontainable therefore do not presume to judge me, or impose your bourgeois values on me, no matter how reasonable they may seem.

 

My, you don’t like the open sea, the unfenced garden, the undotted i, do you?

 

I don’t like unrestrained egoism masquerading as high-mindedness. Let’s be honest, James, you insult and offend people, and then you claim it’s all done for the good of “infinity”, for the good of preserving your undomesticated, unbound, unprocessed, unhomogenised nature. The fact that you leave a trail of destruction in your wake is merely collateral damage and, apparently, irrelevant.

 

On the contrary, it might be very important.

 

In the sense that you benefit from creative destruction?

 

In the sense that... once there was a young man who was walking through a forest, trying his hardest not to step on and insect or worm, trying even to avoid harming small plants, grasses or trees.

 

Oh no... Your story is so obvious, you need not go on. I know exactly what you want to say

 

Do you?

 

Yes. You want to show me how it was impossible for him to get anywhere, that his desire to avoid harm became an obsession, the worst form of OCD, until eventually...

 

Eventually what?

 

Well, either he might have got stuck, unable to take another step...

 

Or?

 

Or he might have met someone who persuaded him that it was impossible to avoid harming all creatures, that in doing so he was compromising his ability to function as a human being, that he...

 

Your version is rather dull because it’s all explanation. Mine doesn’t need to explain what may have happened because I’m not trying to prove a point, I’m just allowing myself to tell a story if you’d let me, which for some reason you can’t or won’t.

 

Oh. I...

 

You didn’t realise it, but you were unable or unwilling to cut me the slack needed for me to spread my butterfly wings and tell my tale.

 

But you don’t have butterfly wings.

 

Ah, how would you ever know if you were ever insistent on holding my proverbial arms by my side, preventing me from raising them, flapping them, for better or for worse, to the best of my ability as a natural, happy, joyful expression of my infinite spirit, of my er…

 

Your er?

 

Ok, my isness, if you prefer.

 

More nonsense. More unfettered egoism masquerading as wisdom or philosophic sensibilities.

 

More angry epithets. But don’t you want to know what happened to our young man in the forest?

 

Not really. I expect you’ll just make something up to prove whatever it is you’re intent on proving.

 

Oh no, I certainly wouldn’t want to insert myself into story. That would be a recipe for disaster.

 

But what would stop you? You’ve already insisted you must have complete licence to express yourself no matter what the cost to others.

 

And?

 

You live for the apparent satisfaction of pleasing yourself, do you not?

 

How could I please myself by controlling or manipulating story.

 

Er...

 

Story is only alive, vibrant and magical if I grant it the same freedom I grant myself.

 

But story’s just a tool, a means to an end, a thing you yourself craft, surely?

 

Ah, that explains your confusion.

 

My confusion?

 

Yes, if you imagine story is something I’d wish to control, or be able to.

 

But how else are you going to write it or tell it, if you don’t use your brain, your imagination, if you don’t structure it and impose some semblance of order?

 

I can use my brain and my imagination all I like, but they merely get me into and hopefully hold me in the saddle. Story has to take me forward itself, and that’s not just making a horse go where I want it to, for story is fundamental, as fundamental as spirit itself, or infinity, and so the relationship is infinitely...er

 

What?

 

I can’t say “complicated”, though in some respects that would be true, nor can I say “simpler”, though that too is true, so best I pause at the word “infinitely” and allow the silence or the unspoken words, the simple truth, so to speak, to express themselves should you or anyone be willing to hear.

 

Oh dear! So your story is not, you’re saying, really yours.

 

Correct. A life of its own it leads, one might say.

 

Might one? So you’ll be as surprised at the outcome as i shall?

 

Without a doubt. How else is infin-ity going to continue flowing through me, or whatever it is doing?

 

But, you mean to say you influence infinity not in the least?

 

No, I don’t. How can one influence the immeasurable?

 

Then what?

 

It’s a kind of holy trinity, isn’t it.

 

It is, is it?

 

Yes. There’s me with my thoughts and ideas, my beliefs and preconceptions, none of which are completely irrelevant, none of which can or should be eliminated.

 

Ok.

 

Then there’s story itself, or at a broader level infin-ity.

 

Do you have to hyphenate it?

 

No.

 

Then why do you?

 

I know not, or perhaps I do but I couldn’t say for certain, not explicitly.

 

Why? You’re afraid?

 

Fear can’t be a factor where infin-ity is concerned.

 

Why not?

 

Because as soon as fear becomes a factor you’ve lost your golden goose, you no longer have infin-ity, do you?

 

I... don’t know.

 

You can take my word for it.

 

If I must. That’s two. What about the third?

 

Of yes, the third... what do you think it might be?

 

No idea. You’re the one with all the ideas.

 

Er… the third must be everything else.

 

Everything?

 

Yep.

 

As in...

 

Everything.

 

The universe?

 

Yes, but more.

 

How can there be more than the universe?

 

Curious, isn’t it, but the universe just seems to describe the physical side of things, as in matter, space and time.

 

And there’s more?

 

Without a doubt.

 

Like what?

 

Well, matter, space and time are all vital parts of reality, are they not?

 

I don’t know. I can’t say I’ve ever really given it much thought. But surely you’re not suggesting that something more than the entire universe, something we’re referring to as “reality” is part of the story process, an actor so to speak rather than a passive background, ambience or...

 

Precisely. How can it be otherwise?

 

Er...

 

How else could infin-ity be real, so to speak, not just an empty, meaningless mathematical concept?

 

I – have – no – idea.

 

I know the feeling, Elizabeth. It’s rather daunting, is it not? But let us trust that it is so?

 

Trust something so outlandish? Whyever would I wish to put my trust in such an absurdity? which in all likelihood is a self-serving theory, designed or intended to support your unfettered self-importance? your belief that you have the right to ignore social conventions and time-tested moral codes.

 

Good question, Elizabeth.

 

I wish you wouldn’t insert my name into your text. I much prefer to remain invisible.

 

I know, but story, in the end, needs a name in order to attach to our world, our reality, so I have to submit: submit or deny infin-ity her right to connect through man and mind with our side of things.

 

Submit?! Humph! You’re just twisting things as usual to fit your agenda.

 

But were that true, were i acting disingenuously without integrity, I would lose story’s thread and I’d be out in the cold, without fairyland, without story, or God for that matter.

 

Without God? What on earth do you mean?

 

Because unless I allow the infinite to work its magic, to weave a spell through a forest of words, to reoxygenate matter itself, enabling it to breathe and evolve, yea, even to transubstantiate as and when...

unless I submit to story in good faith, allowing her to take precedence over matter, over our vaunted inventory of things, over our many conventions and codes, I would have no relationship with the infin-it, nor with her living, meaningful God, merely with her hollow substitutions – i would find myself, like Hamlet, on a sterile promontory upon which I, or my denial of that which cannot be reduced by mind, were the deciding factor, the be all and end all; in which I, the human intellect with all its good intentions, principles, its ethics would be unable to experience that which simply is, in which even God would be cut out by my perfectly rational refusal to accept and work with the irreducible reality He presented us with, perhaps because it is too risky, or too unpredictable, or too demanding, perhaps because…

 

Have you quite finished James?

 

Yes, I believe I have.

 

In that case, perhaps you’d like to...

 

Story, in fact, is never to be denied, Elizabeth.

 

I thought you said that’s what people do.

 

Yes, we do, but it always comes round and bites our behind.

 

It does? I’m not sure I...

 

When you die, if not before.

 

Oh. Not sure i like the sound of that.

 

I know. It’s a little bit bothersome, isn’t it?

 

You’re not by any chance referring to hell, are you?

 

I might be, indirectly, unintentionally.

 

Er...

 

One suspects that hell hath no fury like a story scorned, bearing in mind that story is on the female, open-ended side of our ledger.

 

Oh. So, you think that a story scorned doesn’t just go away?

 

How can it? It’s still part of you, a part you’ve denied. So when you’ve died you no longer have the ability to keep it away, its chickens come home to roost.

 

Oh dear! Just when I thought hell was merely a tool of social control.

 

You’d be so lucky.

 

So then infinity has its revenge? Doesn’t sound very divine.

 

Revenge? I doubt it’s revenge. I guess it’s just a rebalancing of energies, or matter, if you prefer. Honestly, I couldn’t say. The truth is never far away, and always waiting for us at the bottom of the garden path by the little gate leading out into the back of beyond.

 

Danger, danger is all I hear.

 

So play it safe, and rest assured that no matter what, story will always make minor incursions, slight inroads into your world

 

Into my reality

 

By any convenient means – even through me and my refusal to play by the rules.

 

Even through you – so you can get away with murder doing anything you like in the name of story.

 

Yes, but who would i be fooling? Unlike you, i seem to be unable to keep from stepping through the gate into the back of beyond, and thus I am at death’s disposal, so help me God, whenever i leave the garden of things contained, things contrived, things seemingly known.

 

Sanctimonious prig that you are.

 

Sanctimonious prig that I am. But it was nice to imagine that I’m some kind of hero. It was emboldening to my spirit, and you never know, someday, just maybe, I’ll stop deceiving myself and start to practice what I preach, and finally, truly unleash story’s butterfly wings

 

0=1

if only