Plate Tectonics

There is antipathy towards telling, yet that’s what words do, poorly sometimes. Words name, name as verb, in order to get close to the thing they are naming. As close as humanly possible. There is no shame in telling a story. Disappointment comes in the form of explanation. Explanation is always a lie. To tell is not to explain, to tell is to show is to create the space that supersedes the page. Portable as a universe. The page: a portal. Each letter it’s own galaxy.

Sometimes there is a desire to write the unwritten. Other times the need is to unwrite the need. Follow a thread hand over fist back to the source.

This writer has been chasing strings for a long time. She asks, can the author use language, not to tell the story you think she is writing or the story you want her to write, but to create critical sites, divergent and convergent boundaries, which allow the reader to situate themselves anew?

For this reason chronological time is impossible: chronological time is a construct that demands loyalty. Obsession belies time, faithless. This writer is not trying to protect: the obsessed author has little belief in concrete words. Her allegiance is to those echoes that pool below. Even before the naming, history existed. More than one. You can see where this slips: she already knows what she is attempting is impossible. Her syphian lover will never be conquered. But still, she loves.

Where does this narrative happen? It is sliding past the word.

When does this narrative happen? Always and in the singular breath: inhale some, exhale other. To whom does this narrative happen? The reader (as oceanic plate as you ) and the author (as continental plate as me): the cast of characters, mere reflections, ghosts of language abandoned, God.

This is not the narrator’s journey to confess; it is ours, yours and mine. Adhering to absolutes creates a rift meant to erase vulnerability, as if we don’t come together, spread apart, and interact within the confines of knowing what we don’t remember we know.

There is no shame in failing. Failing is the only choice.