__



Saturday 25 December 2021

the ovular shape of be to come

What if every unshared symptom is shared not only insofar as its unuttered in hesitation or hidden out of potential unease, embarrassment or shame, but is a common collection of secret irregularities, anecdotal only to oneself, that amount to an unrecognized new normal, long long-standing, slouching toward a collective end?
 
What if each identity is so desperate not to identify as its assumed opposite, not only insofar as it withholds its essence from the outside, apparent antagonists and allies alike, but clamours to contain its leaks from within so as not to betray its nature to its nature?
 
Such sordid secrecy's surely just another absurd alliteration.
__
 
To say that perception shapes reality is a contradiction of terms. A falsehood full of truth reserved for those perceived as mentally ill or the grifters who would woo them. You can say perception is reality without ruffling the feathers of seriousness, but it's no more naturally true than that reality is perception. The soberest scientific mind should be unlikely to accept anything less than "reality shapes perception". Our honoured doyens of the doctory of headspace can point to a host of ways to avoid that reality.
 
The problem goes back to that contradiction. The one of terms. Verbs like "shape" and "be" misdirect the attention to detail that their apparent clarity manages to bury beneath layers of transparency. "Conforms to" is more accurate except for its being likely to conform itself to a subject-object reversal, as in the previous example with "shape".

There's definitely something to the active versus passive voice of reasoning here, which is really what this puzzle's about, whether 'tis nobler of mind to act out in despair of unknown amplitudes of means, or in agony of resistance to cast this aside and be moved forward forever in flow with its unknowable ends.