in here by Monkey Puzzle Press

memoir - $ 8.00

in here is a fearless exploration into the essential ventricles of memoir. Through concise language, clear and researched narration, and through a nautilus of technical lenses, The Synthesis exposes the authentic self and the first-person singular pronoun as no other could. in here is three legs ahead of its nearest contender. “Blurb quote.”

Author Name, author of Title of Book

“Blurb quote.”

Author Name, author of Title of Book

ISBN-10 098860774-3 ISBN-13 9780988607743 50800

780988 607743

m o n k e y p u z z l e p r e s s . c o m

in here the synthesis

monkey puzzle press harrison, arkansas

cover & interior design Nate Jordon

cover photo

Wing Young Huie

ISBN-10: 0-9886077-4-3 ISBN-13: 978-0-9886077-4-3

Monkey Puzzle Press

424 N. Spring St. Harrison, Arkansas 72601 monkeypuzzlepress.com

table of contents Against the Nebulous Borderline

Lines of Bisection

The Problem of Two

Facts

Lists

Reflections

All Criticism Is Autobiographical

Unanswered Questions?

Will to Agency

Polyvocal Monologue of a Vexed Self

Solipsismcized

Narrative Therapy

Me Too

Acknowledgements About the Author

readerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s note There is memoir. There is not-memoir. There is both memoir and not-memoir. There is neither memoir nor not-memoir.

the synthesis

lines of bisection:

an (a)e(s)th(et)ic(al) suspension of the telelogical There is no human who exists metaphysically. – Kierkegaard –

From wherever I begin, from there I set out with a destination in mind (even when the destination is the process), an endpoint envisioned (even when the envisioning is of an endpoint that will present itself at some undisclosed point in time to some as yet undisclosed—or unconceived—future self), or imagined, or invented post hoc—a step having been already taken from the origin—all of these are endings. The forward thrust of the moving edge of my consciousness traces a line leading into an infinitesimal unknown, the receding limit of destiny on the horizon. What vague outline beckons? Cohesion, completion, consciousness finally circled and contented (a self in full). The teleological pull of a promise whose appeal is so appealing for the sake of the unkeptness it promises (falsely) to relieve. A writer who sets himself a problem has already set his answer too: this arrangement of words follows that.

in here Fig. 1. Lines of bisection

Here is my problem: here is the goal I never obtain: there is the moving target of my self-satisfaction, my self-acceptance, my selfidentify, my self itself: all things gathered up under the covered structure of this sturdy timeline: thoughts occurring in order: this idea always needing and invoking the next: no periodicity in this chain, just links of instances soldered at their endpoints and melding into the causal chain of the history of this sentence: it reaches where it needs to reach and no further: it reaches out to the responsibility to elucidate: My life made sense when I was a physics student: the teacher said Tycho Brahe had a wooden nose and a weak bladderâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I too was ready to represent science and the certain knowledge of precisely (if my results were empirically falsifiable, they were still consistent(ly bold)) where the shoe would hit the floor: my

the synthesis vector was magnanimous and I could identify crystal forms in Europan water without a telescope: I invented the future every time I looked at the sky. This period of my life, though, was over before it reached its midpoint: I learned of Zeno of Elea and lost all sense of progress: I was past Newton and bound for Feynman when the conservation of linear momentum was disproved by the gravitational force of my human fucking heart (q.e.d.). . . . I got to Feynman anyway because anyone who writes like he bongos is worth the rhythm of a dance through possibility where probability leads to the necessity of answering the paradox in whatever terms are available to you: these are my terms: existence and essence, in that order: everything is up for grabs and the narrative resists, resists conclusion . . . where would it end? But the synthetic urge was strong in me and I blew through the idea that I didn’t write this whole thing, this whole endless stream of thing leading on to thing, for the sake of a metaphysics that would make Hegel jealous (if only he’d been born later, if only . . . ) . . . process me processing my process as I tie strings across valleys and tell Nietzsche to walk: That’s where I’m suspended, alone with everyone else: halfway between always and the philosopher of the future (you’ve

in here heard the future comes the day after tomorrow): be ready: to jump: our souls spread wide as we reach for the summation that will give us a moment to breathe if it gives us anything at all—and if it gives us nothing, nothing we will take: we are strong. And we make declarations.

That’s the history, summarily told: physics and philosophy written, only silence left untranslated—and I fear I’ll never arrive. Moving forward, the question is this: the situation is this: Looking back, I see the journey started long ago and the terminus is no closer, though much ground has been gained. I proceed. I always proceed. The project is clear: to write the self into being, to compose a life. But the rules keep changing, my keyboard keys keep sticking: only the metaphysical buttons are working and I can’t push them anymore. I can’t do it. They won’t go. The question remains: which self I will create (which one created I?) and which one is doing the writing and how are they related?

the synthesis And the answer hasn’t changed in a million evolutionary years: I’m barefoot here and there’s no ground beneath my feet. I ripped the bootstraps clean off my boots. The story keeps restarting; I keep restarting it, waiting for the true, the definitive, to present itself. I don’t believe in anything, but it’s in my faithful bones to try. Time and words and self all tumbling around and spiraling in on one another . . . the noise amplifying and magnifying and crescendoing and et cetera and ending in:

acknowledgments “Lines of Bisection” originally appeared in Whole Beast Rag. “Me Too” originally appeared in Frag Lit.

about the author The Synthesis is one composed from many. He writes, “It’s no wonder my conviction is steeped in contradiction. Take two fictions, put ‘em together, and you got the prescription for something different: The Synthesis. Begin with this.” His work is ongoing.

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