I got you. It was the only thing Kevin whispered to Lawson leaning over the crib and now soldiering him through the ER parking lot nine years later. The rest of the life and death game was wordless. This is how it starts but it’s not the beginning. It was always the middle, just past the point of no return.
It’s getting to that point you can’t separate the words “no” and “where” or “every” and “thing” without the software lighting it up in blue-underline. I deleted the other two sentences I just wrote about them. I’m forced to do a wordaround. It may slow us down in a bad way. Maybe not.
Slowing down can be advantageous when you think you’re going too fast, and possibly when you think you are going at the right speed. I do remember that about speed and speaking from my two public speaking classes. One class was in high school. It was in either junior or senior year I took the class. Maybe I could remember if I got my yearbook out of the attic somewhere. The second time was in college. No accurate memory of what year that was either except it took me ten years to get my accounting degree through an unrepeatable combination of dropped courses, major changes from psychology to philosophy to accounting full-time, part-time, night-school all starting in 1979. It was probably freshman sophomore in credits when I took the course, so before the end of mid 80s.
The dropped courses didn’t cost money. After your parent worked a year at the college, courses were free. My mother secretaried clerked there first in the college bookstore, then the Athletic Director’s office, then the Admin Offices for the student center. I can’t remember the order. Again with the blue-underline. You can write “clerked” but not “secretaried”. I shouldn’t complain, you can write 'wordaround’ instead of workaround, and my complaining about words may be too slow. I’ll write harder on wordarounds. Holy shit, I just redlined for adding an “s” to wordaround. Totally distracting. I’ll stop complaining and keep the crossouts essential, but I ask two things of you. One, I need you to catch up before my story reaches you and the unreasonable dark behind you. Two, forgive me. Already I risk you’ll risk your life and read on.
Unbelievable, not again. The first page last line was written too fast. There is no reading it slow. It may seem slow. It’s not. You could read it as an ‘over the top’ slow build up of a coming tension by an old writer. It’s not. It could be a first try at just making up a scary tale or guess of what comes next in a fiction, in your life. It’s not. If only either or both or all were true. If this book and each word you read were only unknown or only a paper roller coaster ride of a fiction or fable for you to take or leave from a distance. It’s not. You don’t get to just read along feeling just a make-believe danger knowing deep down you’re not. You are. The danger is real. As real as you. Death by reading.
Unbelievable, who am I kidding. You may not believe me. Correction. You don’t believe me. We both know it. You would be the first at this point if you did. It doesn’t matter. You may already read a bit differently now without knowing it. It could happen. A correction on ‘may’ you will. The warning of death by reading could work its way in like you’re reading of seeing a Seth Godin purple cow. It doesn’t matter. Not to me. To you, it does. I write the way I need to and whether you come or not doesn’t matter. I’ll try to write slow for fear you do read on, but I can’t stop. I can’t not-write so you’ll catch up. I tried that for fifty plus four-forty push years of lifting. You can’t catch up. Nobody does.
It is obvious I can’t slow or stop in one way. The book is done. Yet, it is more than that for both of us. I keep rereading these words knowing it is much more for you. I add to slow down page two. The original page two is a page in chapter two now. I try to slow down but I find it backfires. I start to focus on where we are going. I get scared for you. I need to find the one way that warns you to go slow like your very life depended on it. I have to before you are too blinded by the light again. Blinded by why you should follow. The “forbidden why”. The one you can only remember by analogy, by covering up, by biting into an apple. An original “why”. Unforgettable once reminded. Unable to return from once past. An un-pantsed nakedness you so far have shown you cannot live with. Not for the fear of death. For the opposite. A suicidal love. An original temptation I dare not tempt you with now but I will. But I must.
I must for Lawson. I must try to bring him back. I knew this day would come. I planned. I waited. I saw no one gets back. No one I know remembers the choice. Some who I have read push close but die missing their words, their choice. You who read don’t remember choosing. I fear I have no choice but to.
Back from a choice so expected no other choice surrounds you now. So reinforced around you it is demanded by all others or be locked up, held back, institutionalized or worse, followed and crucified. For almost all, no purposeful choice. So forgotten, no words survive to tell. No known way to get back. To choose again. To see the trilogy of choice before the worded dualism of this life death being non-being in out you other real fiction start stop right wrong true false up down past present light dark. To stop before the start. Choose the endless otherwise. Stop the worded pointing, the making a point, the point. Stop before the point of the worded maskeraid-trilogy of subjects verb object. Stop before the faithfuls’ father son holy spirit “word of god”. Stop all of it before the newborn is talked into the secular interpretation and explanation of their senses only to point to a now once removed external philosophical feeling of self. A psychological foundation already past the point of no return, of an external scientific past present future time trilogy. The latter smothering with words all believers and non to death. An endless list of us, and all we tag as alive. All else dead. All false dualisms spiritualized by the words of holy and wise. Parent to child. All worded. All seen, learned, actioned, remembered as only possible as past present future. The dark to light to dark. An imposed first person oneness wrapped in a dualism of fictitious wording surrounded by a timed inescapable mask-eraid trilogy of, time, in time, only to be past the point of no return. No second choice. I fear you still choose to follow. But you must.
I must push all the way back. Push apart to the original choice. Back before the separation. Before dark light. Turning around my thoughts. Push. Separate each from each and vanquish words pasted into nonsense non-neuron connecting sounds. All of them disconnected. Back to dark before those words lit continuous electrons clustered into our clutching sparks of wisdom, reasoning, faith, experience, senses once removed by thinking. Each word must go dark. But I must push forward too. Past all conclusions, consequences, ramifications, results, micro manifestations that grow past immeasurable imaginations. I must surpass that worded pride that shines from neuron light to reach again the dark from this other ending side. None disproved for that would rely on the light of other words of reason. All instead must be pushed forward. Past the light of their ending position. The dark surrounds. The light was always in the middle.
I must reach Lawson before he reaches the darkness from the other side of this enlightened perspective of humanity without me. Before he reaches no second worded choice. Past that point of which no one returns. Where I wait already.
I worry about going too fast for you but I know as I write I haven’t. This is not fast. This is only a point. A use of words. You haven’t gone anywhere.
You only follow a point. You only follow to a point. Nothing has changed. No movement back. You are still, and first, a mother’s spoon-feed collection of sounds agreed upon before you were born. A father’s “da” as a permanent one direction growth of grunts started in a cave. Born in the West. Grown in the East. No matter which. Both are you, become you. Made baked or blossomed. Not as solid as wood but as thick. The density of words creates an illusion of destiny. An illusive Wu Wei word moment as “you”. Layers of rings connect into folds of synapses only to give number to year and words to lengthening connection but no movement. Movement requires reinterpretation. A choice otherwise. A move that eliminates all others.
Still though, too fast, too fast, too fast. But stay with me. Keep up. Give me a book to darken the worded illusion of movement so you can then choose an otherwise. Push back before and after the middling dim. Pushing forward past the mothing light into the absolute dark. Push forward and back to what was a wordless memory of no memory, of the original choice of three. Before this you-not-you worded dualism and forced upon past present future delusional common sense. Back to your misworded original sin and misunderstood trilogy for all my fellow catholic children. Do this. You read on. I will write. I will reach Lawson before he chooses otherwise. There is no word for why you should. No promise and little hope any of us will return. Yet I do know this, can tell this... You’ll know what I know. Remember what I remember. Never be afraid of the dark nor seek the safety of the light again. You will be outside of each looking in.
