of flesh and letter

In consideration
of the slow dialogue
disguised as solitude
that is writing

we must also consider
the imaginary people
that populate these lands,
these mountains of words

these thought creatures
and their contribution
to the huge conversation –
the cross talk and contradictions
that zoom around invisibly in slow/fast motion

a conversation on such a scale that
an idea posited a thousand years ago
is finally answered without knowledge of the question
on accident in spontaneous rhyme onstage
at an outdoor poetry festival

and as such another piece of the human composite
is ticked off in orderly fashion
by the disembodied
keepers of the score.

but back to the created beings
formed from the literal word-world of letters
AtoZ for DNA

Brought to life in a bizarre human ritual
that involves absently scratching the head, groin and nose tip
and then clacking away at a keyboard
grunting and shifting in the seat
like a caveman with a Brazen Head or
a crystal skull,
a laser pointer or
an ice cream cone.

finger-tipping away blind
touching the elephant;
developing the elephant,
there all the time.

Must say I’m not sure of the footing,
my placement / role
in the world of creator and creation

A relationship where all involved are incomplete
until the other is realized

So from whichever side of the mirror I reside
I would like to propose
a meeting place
a common ground
a portal
to touch the other side.
A conversation between two worlds
magically conducted, constructed in real-time.

where real can be subjective and open for discussion
where we the Flesh&Blood ™ may be surprised in the end
by the answer

but what fun it will be to convene
a council of flesh and letter
and devise a system
where each human draws a name
for their own personal construct,
a fictional ambassador

the selection process would have to be truly random
and if we are going fully inside/out
who’s to say who is picking whom?

the process must be random since human nature, at least
would dictate a million votes for Don Quixote or Bugs Bunny
and none for spear carrier number IV from Henry V

all along missing out on the romance of a common life
the epic nature of a fingernail
forgetting the failure of the human creator
to detail, to zoom in
on this life, this perspective
just as valid and amazing
but overlooked due to what?
due to scope and ego and plot?

It’s true a writer can’t write his whole life
as a reader can’t read all the time
and all books cannot begun to be read.
(a baker can only bake so much bread? –cute)

but
this doesn’t mean the man on the bench seen for a second revealed in his ordinariness by the main character in Molloy, simply summoned there to further an internal monologue, is not carrying out his equally valid and valuable soul inspection at the same time and that he simply makes a mental note of the Beckett character in his narrative as Molloy limps by. Somewhere that book exists and that person is the star and deserves every word of it and more, only not here in this text about that text or in any known human text but for the limitations of this existence, the limitation of mundane vision,  but mostly the metaphysical limitations of what we humans can create and consume in the breath that is a life.

Big deep breath – inandout and back to what I walked away from:

The fleshing out of either side of the creator/creation equation is a tug of war of belief
(be life)
and how odd for a human to realize the small static character they find themselves paired with, an unknown extra from the Arabian Knights or rabbit #16 from the forest of Winnie the Pooh, or a lead in a cast off, aborted play; created, planned for and then never fully executed, is just as bored and disinterested as we are with them
and to keep the discussion going takes a real exchange of energy
to keep the line open – to keep them from winking out
or fading like a bike-light powered by pedaling –
one must be engaged and open and actually looking at the other
or the light goes out.

but if the balance is struck to conduct this mystical two-way conversation
what is revealed?

one must simply ask
which side are you on
and whom is speaking

and ask what brings an imaginary being breath.

The process is not new.
it is not creation.
It is discovery.

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