Epilogue (Textual Explorations Book 1)

Catch me, I’m falling

I always thought it would be different – that I could
escape in tact. Exit stage left. A free me.

Catch me, I’m crumbling.

The walls were to come down, yes, and the ceiling too,
yes. And a million openings to let the light through like a
million open doors onto an infinite space.

Catch me, I’m imploding.

But not the ground. No – not the ground and the space
and the very matter of self. Ok, I had anticipated it, but
only in the abstract. The dissolution of other must be the
dissolution of self, yes. But when the ground opens under
you – and space becomes only a flattened delusion. And
the very skeleton and tissue and flesh by which I define
myself beomes molecularized, vaporized.

Help me, I’m falling.

And the very definition of self is gone, not just the defini
tion – the very reality of self is gone and here I am per
ceiving, but perceiving what. And ambition is lost, not
just abandoned; and the future is lost, not just aban
doned. And all the divisions, binaries, economies and
spaces lost, far from abandoned.

Help me, I’m running.

There’s no going back. For there was no path, but a
rupture. Like a child picking up wet sand forms that
crumble between the fingers, I keep looking, holding,
crumbling all to dissolve. Is this entropy? My greatest
fear sprung from desire? (It is not a doubt, it is the doubt
– consuming all.) And now I only pray (to whom?) Please
stop it. Now I only pray to myself – absent. Please leave
that alone. Not them. Not that. Let the links dissolve but
not the forms. How to save them? How to save them
from my self – my crumbling self? How to preserve them
as an other – linked?

Help me, I’m loving.

Am I on the border of the true love, the one without self
and other? Or is it simply death – the dissolution of the
self. There is no way to find out prior. There is no way to
stop it. And I dare not wish it. And I dare not think it. –
that love and destruction are one and the same.

April 9, 2003