Post-Post,” Cbxtn Fig

Cbxtn Fig

A story is driven by plot, or by character, or by location. But can a story be driven by its own awareness of being a story? This is called meta-phyction and is part of “posttraumatic literature”—a genre hinted by Modernists such as Joyce and Woolf, who wrote holistic, streamof-conscientiousness, multi-narrative appeals toward funerals and lighthouses, fragmented, light-dappled mosaics

—stoked by blood and vomit, the noxious gas clouds pluming over the trenches of the Somme and the shrapnel jettisoned from the murderous inventions of Alfred Nobel—

—Woolf still enjoyed plot, characters, locations. Post-WWII, post-Zyklon B, was the soil for PostTraumaticism, the disorder which takes Modernist principals and masticates heads before spitting out gory pulps of self-reflection—stories about stories about stories about stories.

“A rose is a rose is a rose” said Gertrude Stein, historically identified with the Modernists but was actually harkening the way for post-rose, post-tautological, post-traumatic literature—little known fact: Stein, a Jewish lesbian, was also a Nazi sympathizer. Cognitive dissonance produces potent poetry. Alas!

What is more poetic than a pandemic which promises to kill hundreds of thousands of people and yet is the door which unites our humanity? Like Zyklon B, the fatal breath passes through the air, in plumes of air, of breathing, inhaled into the lungs, and kills. “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” yelled Eric Garner, yelled George Floyd, yelled fading ghosts who never made it to the twitter feed. Post-internet, postrace, post-consciousness, post-truth. “A post is a post is a post” announced Mark Zuckerberg, “Who are we to decide what politicians say?”

And now the fragmented, light-dappled mosaics of digital reality fracture into multi-narrative appeals toward funerals and lighthouses, entering a deeper

cognitive dissonance, producing a more beautiful poetry (Alas!), a lived poetry, the post-poetry, the poetry no longer chained to words but now written with life, the holistic, the Facebook life-stream, the angels sound their trumpets—We’ve entered the post-paradox where a virus which promises death produces just the right conditions to propagate Life.

A life is a life is a life.