This is me.
Let me tell you a story.
A man and a woman. Together. They lived and died.
Let me tell you another story.
Children were born. They grew up. A man and a woman. Another woman, another man. Together. Together.
This is still me.
A man. Other men. Conflict. Some live, some die. Other women. More offspring. Conflict multiplies. Some live, some die.
Let me tell it in another way.
". . .the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed. . . ."
Kings and queens. Warriors. Glorious death. Wretched life, well worth the letting go.
In medias res. One thing after another. Men. Women. Strange sights. Victory from defeat.
Plot. Action. Rising and falling. The end in the beginning. Men. Women. Scenery.
This is my protagonist. Although he never lived, I will record his adventures as if his were a life more interesting than most. He himself wishes nothing more than to rise above the ordinary.
"In a certain village in La Mancha, which I do not wish to name, there lived not long ago a gentleman—one of those who have always a lance in the rack, an ancient shield, a lean hack and a greyhound for coursing. . . ."
He is an outsider. Misunderstood. Looked down upon by his betters. He feels out of place, but also feels that some other place, less hostile, more suited to his talents, must exist and is worth seeking out. If only he could reach this place he would surely flourish,
This protagonist is me.
What he wants finally is to live. But again woman. Together. Conflict. Strange sights. Plot. Scenery.
This is my new protagonist. He too never lived, but I will make you think otherwise. He thinks. This is his life. It spills out across the page.
"Strether's first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive till evening he was not wholly disconcerted. . . ."
He is an insider. Appreciated by all. Looks down upon his inferiors. Yet he feels out of place, but also feels that some other place, less hostile, more suited to his talents, must exist and is worth seeking out. If only he could reach this place he would surely flourish.
This protagonist is also me.
Avoids together. Plotless. Strange sights. Grist for the mill. Scenery of the mind.
Just catch me telling you a story.
Let me tell you one anyway.
"Where now? Who now? When now? Unquestioning. I say, I. . . ."
This is me.
This is not me. It is my story, but I have disowned it. Let it go where it will.
First a word. Then another. A sentence.
The circumstances surrounding my birth are obscure.
A suitable beginning.
Since neither of my parents are living, I am unable to appeal to them to help me penetrate the misty vapors.
Trouble.
Since neither of my parents will speak to me, I am unable to appeal to them to help me penetrate the misty vapors.
Verbose.
Since neither of my parents will speak to me, I am unable to ask them for information.
Too exposed to the elements. Could use the extra coloring.
I will thus be spared the duty of chronicling my forebears, of reciting in telling detail the particulars of the social milieu from which I emerged.
Good idea.
But neither will I be tempted to dwell on the injuries I have sustained during the period of my growing up, nor on the youthful antics of my days of yore, the lost innocence of those golden days.
An even better idea.
On the other hand, I cannot offer an equally familiar account of the events of my maturer years: no coming of age, no romanticized rebellion, no love of my life, no passionate intensity, no heroic sacrifice, no journey of discovery, no incisive social commentary, no suffering the pangs of conscience, no period of adjustment, no victim of circumstances, no discovery of vocation, no lesson in proper deportment, no mystical insight, no hopeless confusion, no misguided affection, no political agenda, no white collar crime, no blue collar alienation, no youthful indiscretion, no adulterous liaison, no improvement with age, no decline of the faculties, no psychological penetration, no iconoclastic celebration.
What's left? What narrative mutation might emerge from this turbid pool of words?
This is, in fact, not the story of my life at all. For one thing, I am hard put to think of "life" as something I possess, like a videotape to be unspooled, or a moth-eaten old coat I must rely on for yet another season, something to be viewed for an evening's entertainment or taken on and off as a hedge against the elements. For another, "story" suggests an accumulation of incidents that, when subject to the shaping hand of recollection, reveals an orderly progression of episodes, linked one to the other in such a way that no other outcome seems possible, whose end was foreseeable from its beginning. Nothing about my existence can be described in these terms: neither do I wear my life like a garment nor do I plot out my days on the arcing curve of some fanciful narrative graph. I am one who has learned to blend in with his environment, to take what is offered and make the best of it. You may, if you wish, call the traces left in the wake of my objectless movements from here to there a "story," but I am unable to separate this story from the life it enacts—more fitting to call this account the life of my story.
This may or may not be me.
Despite the utterly preposterous remarks contained in the preceding exposition, I see I am still here. So far, so good. The question is, how far can such an approach take us? Here? Here? To the end of this tale, wherever that is? To continue:
His story took a dramatic turn when, upon graduation from high school, he took a job.
His life became almost unbearably eventful when, after working at this job for 5 months and 10 days, he quit.
His story ground almost to a halt when, shortly after quitting this job, he robbed a bank, traveled to the Orient, fought alongside the muja ha'deen, dined with Princess Diana (the rumors of a liaison between the two are, of course, utterly without basis in fact), founded a new religion that now claims over 50 million adherents worldwide, won the Iditarod thirteen times in a row, was elected President of Ecuador (and subsequently impeached), went on a killing spree the death toll of which extends well into the triple digits, slept with every adult female resident of Dayton, Ohio, demonstrated beyond dispute the practicality of cold fusion, sang at least two dozen duets with none other than ol' blue eyes himself, married his high school sweetheart, produced seven children in as many years, then abandoned wife and family because they were cramping his style, won the Nobel Prize for Economics, which he subsequently returned because of the shameful record of the Scandinavian governments in their treatment of native peoples, became the very first human to travel to a distant planet, which he left soon after arriving because the accommodations just didn't pass muster, joined up with a South American drug cartel, which led directly to a high-level appointment in the State department, retired to a country estate in Indiana, where many quaint and blatantly obscene activities ensued, became an aimless drifter in the back country of Wyoming, a period of almost blissful contentment that unfortunately came a cropper when he was relentlessly hunted down by "Buzz" McCaleb, the only openly gay sheriff in all of the Western United States, attained fame and fortune as a writer of "experimental" fiction, especially of stories that pretended to avoid all imposed narrative devices and instead to "evolve" according to the principles of Darwinian theory, and underwent gender reassignment, which, after producing in him a sense of deep sexual confusion, was soon enough reversed, producing in him a renewed potency so profound he was forced to engage the services of 1,376 prostitutes in a single year, which of course didn't sit well with his Significant Other, him/herself a transvestite of voracious sexual appetites but afflicted with such low self-esteem that he/she nevertheless remained in this dysfunctional relationship, undergoing the vilest of humiliations before realizing that he was indeed a person of unlimited potential and that she would not let someone so clearly unhappy with what he had allowed himself to become to block that positive energy he knew was contained within if only she could get to it.
Having risen from the murky depths of this transitional state with if anything his will to survive enhanced, she proceeded to assert his newly found strength of character by affirming her dual nature. A little bit of this and a little bit of that. Two in one, and one in two. Not exactly dual, in fact, but unitary. The more he thought about it, the more it began to seem to her that his situation represented an untapped source of innovation and personal growth if only she would fully embrace his aberration, transforming herself into a kind of inspirational figure for those who might follow in his footsteps. An exemplary character, you might say.
A man and a woman. Together. Victory from defeat.
This protagonist is not me.
Let me tell you a story.
Plot: From here to there. Back.
Action: Many flourishes of the pen.
Conflict: To be or not to be.
Scenery: A windowless room. Blue wallpaper. A clock on the wall. A poster: Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Another poster: Cincinnati Zoo. A majestic vista: dining room table; pink curtains; back room; books.
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus. By the editors of The American Heritage Dictionary. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1980.
aback adverb
Without adequate preparation. UNAWARES
The story behind the story.
He lived and she died.
What remains? Could anything endure such an appalling struggle for narrative survival? Who'll take up the old inheritance and seek out the new possibilities its resources might inspire?
Only me.
Let me tell you a story.
I am the story.
As are you.
The end in the beginning.
Still. Is there something to be said for the getting from here to there? What?
Is there something to be said for the saying?
What shall I say? You? That it's too late? That too much has already been said? That I had my chance and failed to seize the opportunity? That you, too, had the chance to influence the course of these events but chose instead to sit idly by?
Or did you? Had you wanted to remain idle, you could have read that other story. The one about the guy. And the girl. The king and the queen. You could have looked on with admiration as it spilled across the page. You could have swooned with delight at its romanticized rebellion. Its passionate intensity. Its incisive social commentary. Its hopeless confusion. . . . But you know the story.
You could have worn it like a garment.
But here you are.
Here as well.
A tale of triumph after all?
A rousing yarn?
A mesmerizing narrative?
An action plot with many twists and turns?
An artfully crafted whodunit that will keep you on the edge of your seat?
A heartwarming fable sure to delight readers of all ages?
An eye-opening account of human depravity, whose gut-wrenching details are well worth repeating?
To recapitulate:
In the beginning there was. A long time afterward, there was more. Soon enough, much more. And then the trouble began.
A long, twilight struggle. On with it. Running blind. Some ways better than others. Much unavoidable suffering. Moments of surprising originality.
Frustration. Little progress. Only movement sideways. Same old thing. End of the story as we know it.
A happy accident. Renewed purpose. Continued struggle. Unavoidable suffering.
Only movement sideways.
This is, of course, where I came in. Some will say I've made only sideways movements of my own devising. Others might agree there's something to be said for making the effort. For myself, I only wanted to tell a nice, simple story.
Let me tell it in another way.
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