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
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