Storyscape Journal : The Literary Journal of Champions

Dialectics
Christina Murphy

    All day I wonder why I have so few thoughts and so little to say, while Margueritte has so many thoughts that she is filling up an extensive notebook, a journal, she says, that she is keeping in a pale yellow folder.
    Lately, her thoughts have expanded out from the notebook. I find traces of them in places you would never expect to find thoughts. Like the inside of the closet, where she has written: “Everything is relative, except, of course, this statement, which is absolute, and, therefore, not even relative to itself. A kinless statement, you might say.”
    Cleaning out the dryer, I discover in the lint filter a little scrap of paper, folded up. Inside: “Probability theory assumes that probability and improbability can be measured, a proposition roughly similar to asserting that one can find the square root of chance.”
    I am amazed and wonder how long she can keep this up. Of course, I get my answer when I go to sleep that night and find written on my pillow: “Subjectivity is the fullest flight of the imagination.” When I lay my head down, I have “subjectivity” on one side and “imagination” on the other. Then, to my left, there is also Margueritte, who has begun her chanting.
    Margueritte has developed the philosophy that certain words, spoken, resonate vibrations that duplicate the tonal qualities of planetary movements. She has a whole system worked out, with mathematical formulations and drawings of the planets in orbit, together with a short critique of quantum mechanics and a scathing attack upon Laplace’s idea of the predictability of molecular motion. Not much of this makes any sense to me, but I do think some of the drawings are pretty.
    Her plan is to try out every word in the dictionary and note its tonal qualities. Tonight’s word is ARCANE.
     “ARCAAAANE,” Margueritte says, enunciating the long vowel sounds, which she says are particularly important. I turn my head toward the “imagination” side of my pillow, and I see her lying on her back, carefully articulating. “ARCAAAANE.” She jots a few things in her notebook, and then it’s “ARCANUUUUM.”
    By the time she gets to “ARCHAEOOOOPTERYX” I have lost interest, turned my head toward “subjectivity” and drifted off to sleep.
    Even in my sleep, I wonder why it is that I have nothing of value to say. I imagine myself keeping a notebook like Margueritte, sitting on a hilltop and chanting my words until I find THE WORD that reverses planetary motion, slows Saturn, Mercury, and Mars, and opens up an era of spiritual peace. I am to “POOOODLE” before I realize that the alarm is going off and, much to my deeply saddened sense of inadequacy, discover that Margueritte has begun writing in her SECOND NOTEBOOK, one with a soft, baby pink cover, while I have yet to write even my FIRST PAGE!
    What a day! And it’s made even worse when I go to put on my shoes. Margueritte has written on the sole of my left shoe “Q: Can the ground of all Being embrace itself, creating through an intentional act, a type of Ur-Being?” and on the sole of my right shoe “A: No, because while intentionality is a quality of Being, and, so far as we know, no self-respecting intentionality would ever embrace only a mere potentiality.”
    For a minute, I think I have THE ANSWER and put the soles of my shoes together, Q against A, hoping they will generate THE WORD, THE SOUND that gives off the right tonal vibrations to open the heavens!
    Twenty minutes later I am still sitting with my feet together. My shoes have yet to say a word, and I can smell breakfast cooking. Reluctantly and somberly, I walk into the kitchen.
    While I eat my breakfast, I try again. I have a little piece of scrap paper, and I write on it: “Truth is oblong. Of course, there might be exceptions.”
    Unfortunately, Margueritte sees me. “Truth is a Mobius strip,” she says.
    We read the Sunday paper. A picture of a tornado in Nebraska prompts Margueritte into a discussion of EVIL. When the sports page shows a team struggling to score a touchdown, it’s ONTOLOGY AND AXIOLOGY. All the while, she writes comments on our discussion in her baby pink notebook. And she draws diagrams. One looks very much like a road map, with AXIOLOGY up on top near the N, and ONTOLOGY at the bottom. INTELLECT and WILL are the E and W, and across the very top, Margueritte has written: “A journey of a thousand footsteps can be sabotaged by one poorly phrased philosophical question.”
    I don’t know what to do to keep up. By late afternoon, she has filled up nearly a THIRD of her notebook! By the evening news, it’s HALF FULL! I have some entries of my own, but they don’t amount to much: “Remember to buy dog food. Is there a wrong angle for every right angle?”
    I decide it must be the pencils. Margueritte has special ordered a set of pencils that come in floral scents. Plus, they have Marguetitte’s name printed in gold, up near the eraser. Right now she’s using a blue pencil that smells like a hyacinth. That must be the secret! I have only simple, dull, taxicab yellow #2 pencils. No wonder I have such ordinary thoughts!
    While she’s making some coffee, I borrow the red rose pencil and write: “Transcendence is an aspect of the phenomenal world, for in the non-phenomenal world there is nothing to transcend.”
    I AM FREE!
    But then I watch in horror as my red rose pencil, my sweet long stem American beauty, writes: “Tomorrow is double coupons day at Kroger’s.”
    There is no hope for me. Margueritte returns with her coffee, picks up her white, lily of the valley pencil, and begins again. TEN more pages by night time! Even on the napkin by the side of her coffee cup she has written: “To be diametrically opposed is to favor circular arguments.”
    I choose a purple iris pencil and work on my thoughts for awhile, but nothing comes to me beyond a sense of my own futility. Margueritte has already gone to bed. From the hallway I hear “ARCHIPEEEELAGO.”
    I brush my teeth, get ready for bed. She’s on “AAAARCHITECT” when I come in. I get into bed. “AAAARCHWAY,” she says. What I’d like her to say is “AAAARDENT,” but that’s another story.
    I put my arms around her. When she says “AAAARCTIC” I join in. It’s a sweet feeling. Maybe we’ll find truth like this. Maybe we’ll open the heavens together in a rondo of vibrationally similar sounds. Q and A, together forever, in tune with the rhythm of the planets.

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Issue 4, October 2009 {}+previous next story+	Dialectics Christina Murphy All day I wonder why I have so few thoughts and so little to say, while Margueritte has so many thoughts that she is filling up an extensive notebook, a journal, she says, that she is keeping in a pale yellow folder. Lately, her thoughts have expanded out from the notebook. I find traces of them in places you would never expect to find thoughts. Like the inside of the closet, where she has written: “Everything is relative, except, of course, this statement, which is absolute, and, therefore, not even relative to itself. A kinless statement, you might say.” Cleaning out the dryer, I discover in the lint filter a little scrap of paper, folded up. Inside: “Probability theory assumes that probability and improbability can be measured, a proposition roughly similar to asserting that one can find the square root of chance.” I am amazed and wonder how long she can keep this up. Of course, I get my answer when I go to sleep that night and find written on my pillow: “Subjectivity is the fullest flight of the imagination.” When I lay my head down, I have “subjectivity” on one side and “imagination” on the other. Then, to my left, there is also Margueritte, who has begun her chanting. Margueritte has developed the philosophy that certain words, spoken, resonate vibrations that duplicate the tonal qualities of planetary movements. She has a whole system worked out, with mathematical formulations and drawings of the planets in orbit, together with a short critique of quantum mechanics and a scathing attack upon Laplace’s idea of the predictability of molecular motion. Not much of this makes any sense to me, but I do think some of the drawings are pretty. Her plan is to try out every word in the dictionary and note its tonal qualities. Tonight’s word is ARCANE. “ARCAAAANE,” Margueritte says, enunciating the long vowel sounds, which she says are particularly important. I turn my head toward the “imagination” side of my pillow, and I see her lying on her back, carefully articulating. “ARCAAAANE.” She jots a few things in her notebook, and then it’s “ARCANUUUUM.” By the time she gets to “ARCHAEOOOOPTERYX” I have lost interest, turned my head toward “subjectivity” and drifted off to sleep. Even in my sleep, I wonder why it is that I have nothing of value to say. I imagine myself keeping a notebook like Margueritte, sitting on a hilltop and chanting my words until I find THE WORD that reverses planetary motion, slows Saturn, Mercury, and Mars, and opens up an era of spiritual peace. I am to “POOOODLE” before I realize that the alarm is going off and, much to my deeply saddened sense of inadequacy, discover that Margueritte has begun writing in her SECOND NOTEBOOK, one with a soft, baby pink cover, while I have yet to write even my FIRST PAGE! What a day! And it’s made even worse when I go to put on my shoes. Margueritte has written on the sole of my left shoe “Q: Can the ground of all Being embrace itself, creating through an intentional act, a type of Ur-Being?” and on the sole of my right shoe “A: No, because while intentionality is a quality of Being, and, so far as we know, no self-respecting intentionality would ever embrace only a mere potentiality.” For a minute, I think I have THE ANSWER and put the soles of my shoes together, Q against A, hoping they will generate THE WORD, THE SOUND that gives off the right tonal vibrations to open the heavens! Twenty minutes later I am still sitting with my feet together. My shoes have yet to say a word, and I can smell breakfast cooking. Reluctantly and somberly, I walk into the kitchen. While I eat my breakfast, I try again. I have a little piece of scrap paper, and I write on it: “Truth is oblong. Of course, there might be exceptions.” Unfortunately, Margueritte sees me. “Truth is a Mobius strip,” she says. We read the Sunday paper. A picture of a tornado in Nebraska prompts Margueritte into a discussion of EVIL. When the sports page shows a team struggling to score a touchdown, it’s ONTOLOGY AND AXIOLOGY. All the while, she writes comments on our discussion in her baby pink notebook. And she draws diagrams. One looks very much like a road map, with AXIOLOGY up on top near the N, and ONTOLOGY at the bottom. INTELLECT and WILL are the E and W, and across the very top, Margueritte has written: “A journey of a thousand footsteps can be sabotaged by one poorly phrased philosophical question.” I don’t know what to do to keep up. By late afternoon, she has filled up nearly a THIRD of her notebook! By the evening news, it’s HALF FULL! I have some entries of my own, but they don’t amount to much: “Remember to buy dog food. Is there a wrong angle for every right angle?” I decide it must be the pencils. Margueritte has special ordered a set of pencils that come in floral scents. Plus, they have Marguetitte’s name printed in gold, up near the eraser. Right now she’s using a blue pencil that smells like a hyacinth. That must be the secret! I have only simple, dull, taxicab yellow #2 pencils. No wonder I have such ordinary thoughts! While she’s making some coffee, I borrow the red rose pencil and write: “Transcendence is an aspect of the phenomenal world, for in the non-phenomenal world there is nothing to transcend.” I AM FREE! But then I watch in horror as my red rose pencil, my sweet long stem American beauty, writes: “Tomorrow is double coupons day at Kroger’s.” There is no hope for me. Margueritte returns with her coffee, picks up her white, lily of the valley pencil, and begins again. TEN more pages by night time! Even on the napkin by the side of her coffee cup she has written: “To be diametrically opposed is to favor circular arguments.” I choose a purple iris pencil and work on my thoughts for awhile, but nothing comes to me beyond a sense of my own futility. Margueritte has already gone to bed. From the hallway I hear “ARCHIPEEEELAGO.” I brush my teeth, get ready for bed. She’s on “AAAARCHITECT” when I come in. I get into bed. “AAAARCHWAY,” she says. What I’d like her to say is “AAAARDENT,” but that’s another story. I put my arms around her. When she says “AAAARCTIC” I join in. It’s a sweet feeling. Maybe we’ll find truth like this. Maybe we’ll open the heavens together in a rondo of vibrationally similar sounds. Q and A, together forever, in tune with the rhythm of the planets.
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