The Falling Leaf Review, November 2016

THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

THE FALLING LEAF REVEIW A MONTHLY LITERARY REVIEW

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

The Falling Leaf Review (C) 2016 Jay V. Ruvolo

Publishing Editor Jay V. Ruvolo

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Table of Contents Page 04

More Perfect, In Order [essay]

Page 11

Abortion is a Woman’s Parachute [short story]

Page 29

Anonymous is Eponomously Woman [short story]

Page 41

Dissolution [a poem]

Front Cover Photo by JVR Back Cover Photo By JVR

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Bureaucracy is in itself always, and remains, in its raison d’etre, the singular guardian of the state. In America, though,

More Perfect,

we suffer a delusion that bureaucracy is

In Order;

the people themselves an institution of

here to serve the people, but it has been

An Essay Concerning Polemical Understanding

society that has been undermined, allowed to stand on faulty foundation.

We the People of these United States endure a gross and vulgar naiveté

by JVR

about our standing as a people, about our irreducible personhood, and the meaning

We the people of the United States, in order

inferred by this shift in thinking. All civil

—-“order” is the only imperative for any

service agents, all governmental

State, and this state America is no different

administration and every organizational

than any other, federalist republican-

agency simply pumps out the propaganda

democratic, parliamentarian, totalitarian,

of their serving the people while they in fact

fascist, communist, tribal, feudal . . . To

protect the bureaus from the people at

what end, though, we might ask do states

every turn. There is only a state that mildly

organize? For what purpose, we might

serves a public in America, the latter itself a

wonder? Always a more perfect union?

transformation of the people into state

What is more perfect in the mind of

serving domestic animals. Bureaucrats are

any agent of the State, someone who has

public minded in this way alone sometimes,

come to believe or has been made to

if at all.

believe through his training that to serve the

In as much as we under educate at

state and only the state is the highest social

every turn in our standard public education,

ideal he can uphold. Any bureaucrat is of

we do not have nor will we have soon a

one mentality, and that is a mind that thinks

people savvy enough to understand their

of the state for the state, and all thoughts by

place or the role the state has them play.

the state, so help him God, or many

Controlled at every other turn and feeding

instances, the State.

the controllers at every one between, we

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October 22, 2016

have now a system of government in itself

we have sent none of their executives to

aligned with a program of service that does

jail, and they were instrumental in the

not serve—but the public has been

twenties for bringing on the Great

acculturated to expect this. This has been

Depression. But then Obama has four of his

so since the New Left had departed ways

Treasury Secretary’s top aides from this

with the old Left, leaving behind along with

company and others involved in bringing

older establishment ideas about order and

the economy of America to virtual collapse.

rule, the notion of service that at least was

When it is the public, however, and

the heart of the New Deal. Ask not what

never the people, that takes second place

your country can do for you is still the

to the packaging of state, you and I are

mantra of liberal American politics, right

never missed, not lost.

through the Obama Administration.

The direction of government has

But we are closer to the New Deal’s 100th anniversary than we are to its

never been more strongly set at serving the

inception, and thus we have fallen victim to

government itself, or power and/or

a particularly American, and no less virulent

moneyed elites, particularly the corporate

for being American, socio-political virus, the

capitalist and economic institutions of

Cult of the New in the religion of Now.

America and the borderless empire of

Anything we have politically today, including

international investment capital.

political nothing, is newer than the too old

All thought and action is of the State,

for us now New Deal. So whatever we have

by the State and for the State. Nowhere do

now is therefore better in the simian-minded

we find a feeling for people, not in a

average American—and this includes one

poltique that has learned its rhetorical

or another lot of American college

strategies from marketing; Madison Avenue

graduates, even those who call themselves

and Wall Street corporate executives the

liberal.

new founding fathers of American politics.

The number of times over the last

As in all contemporary marketing, product is

two or more decades that I found myself on

second to package if that at all. Where then

the opposite side of an argument with fellow

do we think the people reside in this design

classmates who numbered themselves

—how many bubbles burst economically in

among the educated liberal establishment,

the last ten years and especially over the

those of the eternal left, as we used to like

last two that Goldman Sachs has been not

to say about Shelley and Blake--I used to

involved in, but the perpetrators of, and yet

number Van Gogh from among them

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because I had actually read many of his

cannot read on grade, or even attempt, in

letters--and this oppositional stance was not

any credit bearing course, the work most

because I was of the right or that I was right

college freshman used to be able to handle

wing, as too many of the more insipidly

on arriving in university, let’s say twenty-five

inclined college student who was always

years ago, let alone fifty. And this is in spite

going to confuse his knee for his brain, just

of Mayor Bloomberg opposing social

as he would the doctor's rubber mallet for

promotion. We’ve just lessened the

experience, or what he called experience;

expectations.

no. I could not get one of my closest

We are not likely to produce the kind

friends to stand in defense of liberty with

of literacy we once sponsored, but then I

anything but received ideas from the

am of the mind that thinks it is not possible

propaganda of the left or the media

to democratize literacy, which is to say, that

packaged slogans used to elicit

higher levels of literacy as we had

programmed repsonses.

encountered as givens in university are not

An articulate essay defending Roe

likely to be broadened at base, certainly in

versus Wade was beyond too many of the

society, but almost assuredly not even in

college educated. How coukld this be?

the middle of society. But then that’s what

What was next, as I had persistently

we mean by levels, by grades, by stages,

warned, was the Barbarians beating down

all of them hierarchically arranged in an

the gates. Liberalism had become

ascension of achievement. Toppling the

intellectually weak, effete, no longer

hierarchy and allowing every one to move

passiantate, overly eotional. It had

along a level field, easily moving from one

become ; prone to thinking in slogans, its

stage to another as from one square on the

minds molded by the media, reflexive in its

sidewalk to another is far from achieving

feeling rather than reasoned in its thinking..

advanced literacy. Hop-scotch with the

The chickens have come home to roost.

Truth, ping pong with ideas, randomly

Now we have a state bureaucracy only a little more than "functionally literate," which is just what the average high school

passing images in the mind are none of them what thinking is.

Our solutions have consistently

graduate is expected to achieve—and note

been, for the last forty years, to reduce the

well that graduation is in itself the

standards or requirements of what is

achievement. It does not matter that half of

expected. In one short decade I saw CUNY

New York City High School graduates

make its entrance writing exam a lot easier

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to write, and in addition, twice as trouble-

from except mostly from among the fifty per

free to pass. Norming sessions in grading

cent of New York City High Schoolers who

the entrance writing exam became all about

do not read on grade--barely literate is what

how not to fail too many of the students.

we want from police officers, of course. A

From needing two passing grades, it went

man who struggles with the sports pages is

to needing one of two. From having to write

who I want to carry a gun among citizens in

a thesis driven essay on a topic that

public. Remember what Twain said; a man

required thinking like a freshman university

who does not read has no advantage over

student had been expected to think, it went

a man who cannot read. With a 9th grade

to writing a letter expressing agreement or

reading level, how invested in literacy is any

disagreement on a proposal in itself

man so beset, especially when his under

delivered as a thesis, something on the

achievement had been lauded for years as

lines of writing a letter to the editor of the

special.

daily news, itself written on the fourth grade level, or thereabouts.

Still, the passing average is only

There was a time you could not graduate without reading on grade, and that was with standards of achievement in

around thirty per cent. I had had a seventy

literacy that were not reduced, that is

per cent pass rate from students in my

inflated, in order to raise the percentages of

remedial classes on this very exam, the

achievement. We do applaud everyone,

ACT, yet I ran into trouble with the Deputy

believing that even those who can’t must be

Chair of the English Department, one from

told they can in order to boost self-esteem;

which I have been left with a permanent

and of course, once self-esteem is boosted,

distaste for Community College

the one who couldn’t will become a future

Academia. Can a semi-literate person, one

can. This mentality more than any other

barely above functional literacy, graduate

mind, any other rhetorical strategy, proves

from any of our Community Colleges in

that no one is special, which is pretty much

New York City? The answer is most likely

what we’ve been getting, yet we fail to

yes—nonetheless, he would have to make

make the appropriate correlations between

strides to achieve what he should have in

how poorly we read and write with how we

High School, what most used to achieve

teach, how we teach with how we continue

upon graduation, otherwise graduating did

to mismanage our lives socially and

not happen. And where do we imagine that

politically. Literacy is one of the

our patrolmen police officers are coming

cornerstones of civilization which is not a

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synonym for colonialism or imperialism,

fiction readers are in general more sensitive

except in too many post-post structuralist

and intelligent persons, able to connect

in-formed grad students who have gone on

empathetically to others in a way that those

to get their PhDs and never graduate past

disconnected from either literacy or orality

adolescence.

(an oral folk culture that is not lesser than

However, and herein allow me to go

what we expect and defend in the highest--

off on a tangent, the political and the literary

yes, the vertical axis--ideals of literacy) can.

have for always been mutual antagonists,

Those who do not either read other than

at least metaphysically—and yes, there is

perfunctorily in an alphabetics that

metaphysics. I know, it is just another dirty

masquerades as literacy for the purposes of

word even among academicians, and one

being better disposed to media packaging,

we recoil from as much as we do the word,

or who have lost their connection to an oral

nigger; the latter a word become rock

folk tradition, complete with a firm

become method of execution, execution

foundation in ethical teaching as we have

here the assault on person, personality,

always gotten from de-politicized or a-

psychology; psychic warfare at its

politicized religion, are lost to the received

fundamental. The former was a misstep

ideas disseminated by the media, media

taking things correctly, intellectually. We

being the messages of the elite, by the elite

have become notorious for throwing

and for the elite. The empathy I speak of

puppies out with flea bath water.

here is not the insipid way some solipsists

Nonetheless, politics will for always

selfishly (and yes egoistically) demand you

remain an adversary to the leading role that

to connect to their pain, but actual empathy;

literature could play in the advancement of

right action, a Buddhist would say, and

democracy, the highest achievement of

that's not from the one's who pander

those democratic ideals we once stood for

Buddhist ideas as a cloak to cover their

and think we continue to stand for

own human impotency, but someone who is

(mistakenly). That is, in any theater of

connected to the bare Truth of Buddhist

being, the literary stands at the vanguard of

right action. There is strength in the Dalai

all civil liberties. You know that readers of

Lama, strength in Gandhi, strength in

literature, and now we have to say literary

Jesus, if we want to understand these

literature--another absurdity in our

figures in ways our narrowed and

semantics born of our degraded ability to

increasingly narrowing hop-scotch around

read . . . ; you understand that literary

received ideas promotes.

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Yet, no sane person could ever think of becoming proficient at a higher than perfunctory level in both reading and

October 22, 2016

criminal, one and another of the three, all of piece.

The soul of the people and the anti-

writing, collaterally; unlikely, if love is not at

soul of the governmental administrators—

the heart of one's expression in either. For

and soul is as self-evident to me as mind is

any of us who do aspire to higher literary

to most educated Americans—are mutually

expression than most of what we read

exclusive; they share nothing in common;

seems able to sustain---and I’m not talking

each one cannot tolerate the other’s

about what we read that has no business

existence long before the move is toward

even trying to achieve higher literary

annihilation. They are as close to matter

election, but that which we parade as

and anti-matter in physics as any two things

literary---there is a way of making even the

could be in this universe.

perfunctory writing we do more literate. I

Fascist and communist, for instance,

note at every turn a debilitating ineptness in

are more like salt and water than the literary

literacy skills, even from among those

and the political are when mixed; the public

required to read, even those whose

good is only ever a debasement of what is

guardianship is literacy.

best in the people, yet the people in the

Few of us who respect the literary

worst of times will always trade their liberty,

enough to love her too much should be

barter with their freedom for a few more

surprised that writers and governments

crumbs. This has been evident from some

have always had a tenuous relationship at

of the most advanced and intelligent

best, certainly precarious and mortal in the

societies—presumably—but mostly

worst of times. Writers have often found

societies basely literate, as in the case of

themselves hanging by a precipice

Nazis Germany, a society that voted for the

whenever they have been too closely

Nazis. This is the excuse most Russian

scrutinized by political leaders, or those

Ashkenazim offer for having been members

agents of government who maintain loyalty

of the Communist Party: I had to be a

to their state in counterbalance to any

member, they forced me if I wanted to make

fidelity to art, or to the people. But then a

more money for my family.

bureaucrat’s only link with intelligence is a

A better standard of living for a lot

base and state serving pragmatism. Theirs

less than is always significantly more than

is the cleverness of the businessman or the

nothing—which is why we used to compare ourselves always to the most horrible

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places on earth; even our charities

many grotesques, and this election is a

broadcast by fundamentalist Christian

carnival of lost souls.

organizations here in America, often the

This is not to say that there is no

most conservative politically, are always

genuine charity in US, and that we

propagandizing the suffering around the

shouldn’t feel grateful for our blessings—I

world against a better life here. The

believe that we should, that there is a kind

fundamentalist right works on the

of arrogance that takes for granted

imaginative interplay of America being the

whatever we have that is beneficial for

best of all possible worlds. We are fast

living rather than merely surviving. But don’t

going from the last best hope of humankind

tell me there isn’t propaganda too in the

to the first best delusion of a future world

messages delivered through the media any

order of elites, powerful and moneyed. Big

time you see an infomercial about famine

Brother has nothing on the kind of Matrix-

somewhere in the world. And we shouldn’t

like control we will soon see and have been

take our need to be grateful for what we

seeing in part from our mass media popular

have as a signal not to advocate for change

culture; the aftermath of Michael Jackson’s

where change is necessary. Now of course

death for example.

I recognize that it is just this idea of what is

Look at how lucky we are to be here

and is not necessary that is at the heart of

in America seems to be all that any Trump

how much change happens in a society,

supporter thinks of saying, expects

and we must be aware that there are

everyone else to say; jingoism and

hundreds of thousands if not a few million

Chauvinism (in its etymology) are the

people living in America for whom a far less

thumping cries of the Trump throngs. Greed

gentle America than I remember, or a far

and nastiness, a baser meanness than I

less generous social serving America than

have ever noted before this campaign . . . I

we once knew, is still a lot better than

think never before has it been clearer who

where these millions come from, so

to choose. Particularly interesting is how

however America might change for the

the other choice is herself less than

worse, complaint is not only thin, but

desirable. Hilary is only viable because

gratitude exponentially greater.

Trump is so heinous, which is why Bernie

One of the great horrors we face

Sanders was as viable for as long as he

every election and especially this election is

was; Hilary is actually the lesser of the

that when we vote for any candidate, that vote is actually a vote for the status quo.

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Exercising your right to vote is exactly that,

themselves as the solution to politics. The

saying that what is is good enough,even if

problem with politics really is that it is not

only for now. We have yet to radicalize

political enough; it is corporate, it is

voting, but then I am going to get into my

litigatious.

Pro-test Vote cast for no candidate--protest non-vote does not say it. It is confusing and

The End

I realized that a long time ago. What I really miss from politics are career politicians, not lawyers or businessmen packaging

self-promote. What does get to be called a story?

Once more, I story or I do not story,

Abortion is a Woman’s

infinitively constructed, again without gain to story or not to story is every narrator’s to be or not. That might be a question? Inquiry

Parachute

itself posing a question upon yet another

by JVR

questioning, all questions are quests of kinds; Perceval wanted to know.

What is narrative? I have asked, and I have

And so on until the last syllable of

avoided asking,knowing that perhaps I

the final spoken question . . . now, whether

should have asked, or maybe that this

it is nobler in the mind to endure how we

question has been asked too often by too

dance around asking for the Truth;

many reflexively, or rhetorically, as if the

questions are inquiries which should be

asking or the posing ( I should say

searches for the truth if not a setting of the

imposing) were to have said enough. What

compass heading to that place on our

should I subject my self-to as narrator; to

metaphysical horizon. Big words or big

proscriptions too narrow in analysis of what

wind; I do blow hard the sails of this ship.

gets to be called a story . . . to story or not

Every essay is a journey; all explications

to story; I story well, I think, say if I may

journeys of discovery? Inquisitions are yet other manners of approach. What am I

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October 22, 2016

trying to say about how we avoid doing

histories? Is that not how most of us do tell

what we need to do, and here I am using

what we tell. Lions have no story-tellers,

we because it makes more comfortable

you know, without tellers . . . how much of

than if I were to use I, I, I . . .

history has not made it into any

We do want to inflict harm; we are hypocrites this way. We do hate too many people too often with an ever increasing

historiography? All stories of the hunt, you know.

Historiography has been what we

intensity it seems. As easy as it is to do,

call history in itself since the dawn of

and a lot easier than those who insist they

writing, and even before, really. Orality had

do not hate are able to admit, we are

its official versions, anyone could know.

malignant. We cannot love appropriately

Yes, what then is fiction because a story

even those we say we love. We are, as

that I tell you is true before I tell it, even if all

suspected, very, very stupid? Is stupid the

of it is a lie, is accepted as non-fiction. Now,

word? Narrow minded? Could say that.

vice-versa, if what I know to be the truth,

Insipid? Afraid? Eager to a degree off the

and nothing but the truth, so help me, I tell

scale it seems to me, thus I say I think, I

you is a fictional story, and I tell you so you

think, I think therefore I am anxious. Â

can have no equivocation over accepting it

The human psyche is masochistic,

as a fiction, what then does that make it?

no? So, who gets to tell his story, her story,

Fiction, of course. What I tell, I tell as I do;

mine, this story I tell, as I have begun to, as

to tell a story is to narrate? Everything told

I have in a way you--what do I know of you?

is fiction of a kind everything argues,

I should know something. Know your

defended, insisted, said, remembered,

audience was a mantra from Freshman

recalled, recollected . . . what else have we

Comp.Classes. Who does not get to tell his

in words . . . no two words share absolute

story; who is not allowed? Permission not

synonymy. What then is connotation?

always a thing we ask for, think we must,

Narration is to tell a story, is to give a

know we can, give freely.How do we

spoken or written account of something that

prevent others from telling.

happened, but it is also a set of choices in

Telling a story is what history does,

the saying. Perception is not the only

history is what? What it should be? All in

verification of the real, but it has an awful lot

the ‘ography,' history is historiography. But

to do with what we think is real, what we

then is not history all about historiography?

think is true, what we accept without

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October 22, 2016

question as the only thing to believe. All

and say about what was is appalling to

philosophy is fiction, is it not?

listen to because what is most disturbing to

Now what is true and what is the

me is just how bad most people are at

Truth--and note the capital 'T here, which is

telling stories or just remembering them. I

important, yes, it is significant because it

used to think that storytellers probably

denotes something for which far too few

remember things better than people who do

today in Academia have any trust . . . in its

not tell stories, whether the stories are

validity . . . but back to it signifying . . . what

categorized as fiction or non-fiction.

does it signify? How many want to conclude

But what is this with respect for

that it does signify nothing? Â And you

objective truths . . . how facts, facts and

should be able to get this without much

more facts . . . what is it about facts that

explication.

has so many of us foaming at the mouth,

Of course, we could ask ourselves

salivating dogs? Just what is it I am saying?

just where memory fits in this explicating

People remember what they think they

fiction and non-fiction? How much of non-

remember, what their emotional baggage

fiction is after all fiction, is after all

allows them to carry with them, what room

constructed after the fact, no video tape to

is left for truth when all space is filled by our

go to, huh? I am not trying to be coy. Even

emotions . . . images in the mind, events as

a video tape is not the everything there is to

recalled lead to what in most heads?

say or hear.

Fiction, from the Latin, is anything

With all the stinking refuse that streams out of mouths today, tomorrow,

made. Memory, being mostly a construction

yesterday, all time I know you know you

of the mind in the process of recollection or

should believe is one, all of it singularly

the happenstance of recall, is thus a fiction,

comprehensive . . . they drop the ball on

as I have said. Whether you agree or not is

telling. If this appeared on most social

not the issue. A thing made, I think I have

media, you would have no idea how many

said about memory many times. Yes,

impossibly inane comments there would

nothing but the facts, right? Facts, facts and

be . . . if you were anyone who read and

more facts; factory made; Henry Ford would

read deeply as if a text were a multi-

be proud of the mind’s efficiency at making

dimensional journey belied by the flatness

facts.

of the page, the linearity of the text in words What most people remember comes

straight out of their asses; the shit they tell A Monthly Literary Review

printed in lines, you would have to conclude other than what most persons who 13

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regurgitate across all social media think

October 22, 2016

The one you have assumed is your

about what they say, if thinking about what

mind remembering, recollecting, recalling—

they say were really possible because the

they are all not the same things, you know,

hop-scotch most people play with words or

the three of them: to remember, to recall, to

with the Truth does not equal what

recollect. What do you know? How much do

thinkning is or should be—yes, there are

you know with certainty? What is it that I

shoulds.

know? Can I know something? And I do not

I do want you to tell me, though, just

want to culminate with doubt, doubt and

what memory is, yes, what is it, what do

more doubt. I do not want to end with

you think it is, know it is. I do not want you

doubt, doubt and more doubt as we do, as

to tell me what you think I think it is, or what

we have done for so long now. You are

I imagine it is, what I know it is and what I

supposed to begin with I know nothing to be

do not know it is, but you, my hypocrite

able to determine what you do know, what

reader--all readers are hypocrites, my

the limits of knowing are, where knowing

brothers, my likenesses, all . . . and so

begins or ends, what it is we can call

again we return to What is it but fiction, this

knowledge. I am sure that knowledge is

thing memory? Yes, a fiction, a thing made,

possible, and I know this only because I

gaps between the images, fractured events

have not succumbed to the mandates from

as they happened? Nothing is as it

the Cult of Doubt pervading our culture; a

happened when in the mind we see it. Is it a

place where doubt, that is, doubt first and

thing or is it a place, or is it an entity? Is it

ultimately doubt, is the highest wisdom.

alive? If not entirely fiction, then partly,

I can remember without recollecting;

right? Although, how much partly we do not

when I recollect, I am remembering . . . and

ever consider, do we? How many conflicts

so on, I say, cutting short this tangent.

do you have in your life with others very

Fiction is fiction, right? Non-fiction,

close to you when facing contrary accounts

non-fiction, of course? So then, the essay—

of what you are so sure you remember?

what is it we call the essay? To essay is to

You know what I am talking about. Do you

try, to put on trial in the mind with thought.

let it go? No? You go to the video tape you

Speeches are essays; letters as essays;

have in your head, don't you? Of course

journal entries as essays? Not always.

you do, and most of all, most of us do too.

Sometimes? How often?

We are not fools, right? No? I know I am not, so what then do you think?

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Essays in fiction, fiction in essays, essayistic fiction, fictional essays. I am not 14

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October 22, 2016

going to sort this out for you; I have not

another and another also know what they

sorted it out for me. But the fact that I am

know, don't we? Even if it is what we call

writing an essay does not mean that what I

non-fiction, a true context, it is a persona I

write is not fiction, and here I mean the

wear as the writer, narrator, expositor,

traditional or conventional notion of

teller--who am I for you? Even if it is me the

fiction. You do know that I am a fictional

editor of the in-the-world review I edit and

narrator or expositor or both--and so who I

publish, but this is not the case or is it? And

am here on the page or screen for you my

now the person and the persona have been

readers becomes a question to ask, to

conflated.

answer or at least respond to, not

Persona is person, of course . . . and

necessarily the same.

in a way, yes, personality is maskality, or so

If I were to examine what gets said by most

you could say, as I do, have . . . the masks I

reasonably intelligent persons, I would

wear, the many,many masks I wear on this

cringe; if most persons speaking or writing

and other stages around my world. The

were to examine what they have said or

many you wear as well. I have said this

written, they too would cringe.

before and I will say it again, and again,

There are days when I come to a

one story told after another story told,

place where I can accept an old notion that

narrators conflated with other narrators; one

philosophy is another kind of fiction, no?

narrator the same unnamed in one text

But then, that would not subtract from it as

after another after another together

philosophy, would not subtract from its

speaking in motifs. Wearing masks is not

veracity, its Truth-value, right? You know

what makes you phony. Sometimes I wear

that proving God does not exist--and let's

masks in my essays,the non-fiction pieces I

pretend that you can do so (just as I let the

write. Does it matter, really?

devout think that they have proof of God's

Here then is the story as entitled

existence)--if you were to find proof that

above. All titling an entitling; what is this

God did not exist, that would do nothing to

story entitled to, for, as . . . yes, everything

the veracity of the Gospels . . .

about personality is all about maskality. You

What's it going to be, then? I could

do know that /p/ and /m/ are minimal pairs,

ask. Homage is homage wherever you find

don't you . . . I am not going to insist that

it. Successful or not is another question;

you should. Should would and could;

relevant? Appropriate? You know what you

beware the moralizers telling what you

know as I know what I know as another and A Monthly Literary Review

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

should do should think should want should

in his boat without buckets. Maybe

say, would say if I could say what I should.

parachutes are not--what did I mean

So then, bailing out, bailing out,

maybe? The White Star Line did not think it

everything here hinges on this bailing

needed enough life boats for all the

out.What is this bailing out I speak of now?

passengers--is that what I am trying to say

The plane's going down in flames? Â A

about airlines and their policy of no

parachute or a bucket? What then do I use

parachutes for passengers? Having enough

to bail myself out? The President had other

lifeboats too was impractical . . . why?

ideas, didn't he? Bitch of the bankers, no?

Because of space, because of greed; how

The current election is a sidestep into side-

is it we do not see that the flip side of greed

show to confuse or confound the American

is being cheap.

voters and make them believe again that

Poor people who are cheap are only

there are ideological differences between

wishing they were rich so they could be

Republicans and Democrats when there

greedy. Being cheap is the only way poor

are not and have not been for too long. I

people get to be greedy. But that's not why

cannot trust the sincerity of the Donald. We

White Star Line did not have enough life

were just about to arrive at a place where

boats on the Titanic.

we recognized that neither party served our

It did not have enough life boats on

interests and along comes Donald T. and

the Titanic because very simply, Money has

confounds and confuses with his carnival

always said "fuck the poor," and the British

barker show. And this is even more

especially so when the poor were Irish

appalling to me and appealing to too many

Catholic. Yes, the British have always

others than Obama's Minstrel Show. Black

sucked if you are Irish and Catholic--and I

men in blackface is not a stretch. I haven't

do know that there are many (too many)?

gotten to White men in white face, the many

Protestants and Jews in America who are

minstrel shows of the American socio-

saying right now that this is too much, that

political stages we erect everywhere we

this is not a fair assessment of British policy

want to pretend to be free.

and history because when it comes to

So, whatever it is we think, if my

struggle or suffering, oppression or

airliner were going down in flames, I'd most

repression, everyone is fucking greedy. I

likely be dead soon. Airlines never think

have as much love for the poor in America

parachutes are practical. I had a friend

as I do the rich, and as much for the rich as

when I was a teenager who never went out

I do for every other fucking neoconservative

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

working man who has been streaming beer-

see, meet, know, befriend, fuck and love;

shits out of his mouth for so long he's

women. Women are women, have been

drowning in his diarrhea the way some

women wherever they have lived, have

drunks or junkies do their puke.

loved, have been abused, have been

So now the shift . . .

contracted for as breeders of men's brood,

How are women in the world in a

a brood mare, yes, women become

better position than Irish Catholics were on

domesticators because they have been

the Titanic; black women, white women,

domesticated? I question the accuracy.

Asian women, Latina women, Muslim

Women will be women remain women as

women, Hindu women, Catholic women,

women have always been women

Protestant women, Slavic women, Jewish

everywhere for all time the only way women

women, Native American women, Indino

have been allowed to be women which

women, Zoroastrian women, these women,

might not have anything to do with how

those women, fat women, ugly women,

women have wanted to be women. Did I

beautiful women, stupid women, thin

forget lesbian women; all or any of the

women, hateful women, loving and caring

many kinds of women above applying to

women, motherly women, mother-fucking

those who are lesbians?

bitch women, saintly women, devilish

The British are real pieces of shit?

women, generous tall women, tall women

The Japanese are real pieces of shit; the

with hideous legs, tall women with long

Chinese, the Russians, the French, the

gorgeous legs, sexy women, funny women,

Polish, the Arabs, the Pakistani, the

sexual women, women with big tits, women

Germans, the Italians, the Swedes, the

who laugh a lot, women who cry a lot,

Canadians, the Australians, the Americans,

women with small tits, women with medium

the Mexicans, the Brazilians, the whoever

sized tits, women with tits too big for them,

else you want to list from wherever else

women with huge tits not too big for them,

they may be from.

women with small tits just enough, mentally

Human is human enough when homo

fucked up women, sensible women, rational

sapiens is what most people believe,

women, sensitive women, reasonable

everywhere in the world. Cain is Abel's

women, rich women, educated women,

brother. So just what do you think I think the

poor women, uneducated women, hard-

Russians, the Chinese and the French are?

working women, cheap women, highly

Can you imagine what I think of Americans?

literate women, whatever women you find,

What do you think, if it is thinking that you

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

do . . . because randomly passing images

Prefatory remarks made by a man who has

in the mind is not thinking, nor is playing

been made to stand for a chorus in an

ping pong with the pros and cons of ideas,

imagined play in an imagined theater? All

nor is playing hop-scotch with the Truth?

the world, you know; my hypocrite brother

Yes, what do you imagine I think of

Jacques is with me more than I realized.

Republicans and Democrats. If you really

I do recall the medieval Everyman,

need me to explain this to you . . . how is it

but then that, I have assumed from time to

we keep playing the political ping pong we

time, but never persistently past the time of

do and tire of it? Alice asked.

its arising, that Everyman should really

Don't imagine I think the Irish are not

have been Any-man, as I have alluded to

also big pieces of shit because I imagine

here above in the reference to anywhere.

everyone everywhere every-when to be big

But even more specifically, it should be any

pieces of shit. There's nothing like a real

person, even if the woman contained by the

poor piece of Irish Catholic shit in the ghetto

boundaries of any text were to bleed to

of Belfast for trying to fuck-over and keep

death from a botched abortion, presumably

down another Irish Catholic. Muslims kill

an illegal one, thus one that was not

more Muslims annually than were killed

medical practice but some other form of

throughout all of the Crusades by Christian

bodily invasion more akin to alien probing

armies. Christians kill more Christians every

or rape of one kind or another—and there

day than all the Islamic terrorists have killed

are many kinds. This would be about any

Christians since 9/11? Are these

person, as it is this anyone that I have

questions? Do we need to be on such

attached myself to, here, the presenter, the

quests? Aren’t these prima facia?

speaker, the writer, who he may be is what

I feel as if I could think that this is

he is by context given, the one who does. I

true for you in your mind, but what is in your

am not apologizing to Protestant or Jewish

mind I do not want to find out about, no, not

friends or colleagues. If they do not

really. No one wants to be in another

understand what is present here, no

person's head. You think you imagine that

apology is going to help that level of semi-

you want to be like another person, be like

literacy.

someone else, have someone else’s ;life— envy is a devil?

Yes, everyman is any-man, is anyperson, woman is person, the compound is imperative here, and we must note the connotative distinctions between 'man' and

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

"person," although in Anglo-Saxon, 'man'

as we understand it, this past, this present

meant what we mean by 'person," so then

and this future, are all of them, all of it?

we have man and person and mask, what

One. Time is one; all time is one. Past,

'person' means in Latin, 'persona,' as in

present and future are illusions,no? What

"dramatis personae." My mask, my

happens when I recall something? What is

character, my personality; my manhood or

this act this happenstance this event this

my personhood; what then is a person if all

process to remember? Thus—thus what?

of these or only some of them, any one of

Can we then say, to remember or not to

them at any time—I go for all, all at once,

remember . . . I recall an essay by Oscar,

every day, any day, all the days of the rest

“To Read or Not to Read.” I recollect the

of my life have been affected by what I am

title page in an edition of his collected

living what I have been living.

works, collected, not complete. What then

The day and date are no longer important; in fact, they never were

must I say, must we do, must then do I . . .

When I was a boy and my father and

important--except, perhaps, they could be

I were avid followers of NASA and the

important to someone somewhere at some

space agency's progress to the moon, I

time, concerned for the historicity of what is

learned that in every command capsule

said and how and to whom, when . . . time

there was a rather conspicuous red button

is and is not of the essence--I never knew

to push if the mission should need to be

anyone who ever knew what he was saying

aborted on the launch pad. Less than a

by half of what he said. There were many

decade after this, the Supreme court

who had no clue of more than half of what

majority decision in Roe versus Wade

they said. There were some who still have

established a woman's legal right to have

no idea what they were saying anytime

an abortion, although no red button was

anywhere to any-whom. Everyone is talking

forthcoming.

to himself--no? What she used to say, I can

In the seventies we had too many

still hear her say. Is historicity in the date, in

discussions and not enough argument

the hour, in marking the calendar? What I

about a woman's right to choose an

remember and how I remember is of no

abortion, a right I did not oppose, a right

never mind in the manner with which events

she had always had in spite of legislation to

happen in what we call time or thew time

the contrary. I would eventually come to the

we imagine we have handled with veracity

position that it is not the law that gives a

and acuity and objectivity, when in fact, time

woman the right to choose, that that right

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

exists in spite of the law. What the law does

woman's right to choose, which may be to

or can do is provide legal sanction, thus

have the baby, as it is also to have an

hopefully legal protection, thus a loosening

abortion. Having a baby became more

of the grip that social conventions might

about a woman's choice than her obligation

impulsively tighten around her, and in our

as a breeder after Roe versus Wade. I

contemporary political climate, a hard rain

cannot tell you how many women there are

is about to fall, Alice said her older sister

who are set against women, who do not

had said.

support women in their struggles for

To choose to end a pregnancy has

equality or liberation, she said. Alice

always been a dilemma, and after Roe

Buconiglio said as much in these and in

versus Wade the number of rocks and hard

how many other words for what she

places did not quickly lessen. If a woman--

believed, wanted to say and say again to

what woman, which woman, do you know

drive home the point. I did see how many

any woman for whom she had come to the

women were set against women, were Cain

point where she needed to make a

to every other Abel woman; and do not

choice . . . again, to choose or not to

confuse or confound the issue or the

choose became every woman's to be or

analogy. Please do not be pedantic as it

not. At least after Roe versus Wade, she

seems most people in most societies

was not a criminal for choosing one way,

cannot help but be, I would have liked to

and was expressing free-will if she should

say here, but decided against, as you can

choose the other. To have a baby or not to

see why, or should that be, hear why?

have a baby, how long had it been for

You do know that the only thing you

women feeling they had no choice but to do

need to know to tell you anything you think

what a man wanted,and how easy it was for

you might want to understand is that the

a man to deny, to abandon? Is that also

voice herein is the only voice you should

true? The Right to choose also frees the

listen to, and anything else you might want

woman who wants to have a baby. Pro-

to know is truly incidental. The story is me

choice is not only a position for a woman

telling, not what I have said alone . . . there

who wants to have an abortion. How can

are choices you make in your reading too.

anyone side with the fucking moral freaks

All women choose between having a child

that are our homegrown fundamentalists?

and aborting the pregnancy when the

The legally sanctioned right to choose an abortion honors, fore-mostly, a A Monthly Literary Review

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

missions to space. There have always been

October 22, 2016

Hamlet's dilemma is to be or not to

ways to induce miscarriage, some of them

be, which is also any woman's who has to

frightening and almost concentration camp

decide if she is going to carry her

like in manner, others just dangerous, but

pregnancy to term or not and thus choose

choice is always elemental.

to terminate it. Hamlet did not raise the

The idea that an induced

issue of having a parachute or not having a

"miscarriage" has not always been an

parachute because there were no

option is a mistake. The difference in a

parachutes . . . the way she decided, how I

legally sanctioned abortion is the matter of

imagined she had . . . there were the

safety. It is the difference between having a

equivalents of life boats in the sailing of the

parachute and not having a parachute

time. When a woman wants to have a baby,

when the plane is going down in flames. Of

tries to have a baby, gets pregnant and has

course, this is not practical in contemporary

no apparent dilemma before her, she has

commercial air travel, but fighter pilots still

chosen not to abort. To bail out or not to bail

have parachutes and ejector seats to save

out is always a question. When the plane's

their lives. This is the idea. Presumably,

going down in flames, it would be great if a

under sanction of the law, a woman now

parachute were available. It's sensible; it's

has the option to safely end her pregnancy,

rational; it's reasonable to expect our

where before she did not.

culture, our civilization, to support a

Our medical establishment assures

woman's inalienable right to choose.

us of the safety involved, yet more women

However, this is not the case in America

die annually from medical malpractice than

today with how many religious nuts getting

from breast cancer. Another essay is

behind the move toward eliminating laws

needed, one addressing the persistent

that support a woman's right to choose. I do

second class status for the still second

fear the Republicans. What was it that we

sex. Who then am I if we are still puzzling

used to say back in college? If the people

over who she is, a woman is? Who would I

want to go to hell in a handcart . . . fucking

have to be to say what I have so far said,

democracy in a society where systematic

the way I have herein said it . . . for her?

under-education is the rule to keep the

Who am I to speak for any woman

welfare roles full and unemployment down

anywhere at any time? Who am I to speak

by insuring there will be a steady river of

for me? I could ask. Alice spoke for herself.

applicants for McDonald's and Walmart.

I am not speaking for her.

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I could have come to many of the

October 22, 2016

When? Where? How? Why? What then

same conclusions, have made many of the

does that say about her or about me,

same assertions, without having known

whatever I might be.

Alice Buconiglio--and I do not know exactly

When I was an undergraduate for

why I am using her surname when

the first time, there was an argument in

everyone I know and she knows know that

college that went as follows: You can't tell

we were together in a way that would never

me that a fifteen year old girl is ready,

require surnames--but then I am not me

emotionally or psychologically, to have a

here as I know I am who I am in these lines,

baby; that it might not be a stress in these

and this narrator expositor is a persona, as

ways too much for her to handle.

I tried to say above, but whether I was

Pregnancy was traumatic. I understood this

successful or not has not yet been

argument. I too felt the emotional power

determined? Even with me being who I was

behind it. I was sensitive to it, or so I

with her; the mask of narrator worn covers

assumed; perhaps I should say I was not

the mask of boyfriend having been worn.

insensitive to it. The former and latter,

We are on our way to this; I am sure

sensitive and not insensitive are not the

there are those of you who have greater

same thing, stating the obvious? Nothing

optimism as I am sure that there are those

more easily overlooked than the obvious?

of you who have greater pessimism. What

Nonetheless, a pregnancy for a fifteen year

then do I say about what we then must do?

old girl in any middle class home or

To try is not to do a Speech Professor once

community would be traumatic, perhaps as

told me with mock derision. What world do

much, if not more, for her parents. I am not

you want to live in? I do not want to live in a

so sure it would be equally devastating for

world where there are too few life boats,

girls in other communities, or from other

that's all. Is it important to you if I am a man

economic classes, but let us assume that

or a woman? Why? The same topic. The

bourgeois mentality and morality have

same intensity. The same speaker to a

pervaded, which is not to say that ethics

similar audience. Is he preaching to the

and morality (and they are not synonyms)

choir? How is preaching to the choir not

only exist among those of the American

integral to the preacher's sermon? He is I; I

middle class. I am sure there are a plethora

am he; I am we in the many pages I write--

of responses from parents or elders of any

what then the story line here . . . can a

back ground, some of them sane and

woman use he as a general pronoun?

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

reasonable and others quite irrational and

the merits of the perception, only present

frightening.Â

that the perception exists.

Could I be a woman writing a

If there were a boy to marry and

fictional essay as a man who then tries to

marriage ensued, I presume any parents

pretend to be a woman writing? Can I wear

who would have been shocked ethically or

the mask of Alice as I do sometimes inside

morally or in their sense of propriety would

me, the masks I wear within should be

suffer a lesser shock. The matrimony that

examined, Eugene, I know?

might ensue could soothe their previous

If there were no boy to marry, this

embarrassment, but any parents with

would pose a problem for a girl who was of

aspirations of the daughter's self-reliance or

any religious or cultural tradition, or

career advancement as a result of her

economic or educational status, for how far

advanced education beyond the B.A. would

have we come in this world from the

not be assuaged by the baby having a

condition of women in society since Ms.

father present. I am not herein considering

Wollstonecraft wrote her Vindication of the

the psychopathic, whereby a woman's, or a

Rights of Women? The fact that any girl

girl's, life or limb is in jeopardy, from those

who was accepted to Harvard, let us say,

who say they love her when she becomes

and who also became pregnant at 18 would

pregnant without marriage. Emotional

be a shock for any family is easy to

trauma correspondent to the level of

understand; the presumption that any girl

ostracizing a girl would endure from her

accepted to Harvard as an undergraduate

community would have to be measured

might make an acceptable candidate to any

separately. I make no assumptions for how

one of number of top tier PhD programs in

progressive all of us are; history is anything

whatever field she was to choose would

but progressive.

increase the anxiety. What is her pregnancy

We do have to see that if the girl

at 18 going to do to any of her family's

were of an upper-middle class family where

imagined prospects, if they were in fact

one or both of the parents are university

pinning their hopes of future advancement

educated, perhaps where both or at least

on the daughter graduating from Harvard,

one has a post-graduate degree--the

whether fairly or unfairly? No one is going

expectations would be for her to go to

to assume initially that the girl can easily, or

college, and not just college, but as

if at all, complete her education once

aforementioned, graduate school. A

pregnant. I am not going to argue against

pregnancy, even if there were a boy to

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

marry, would be an impediment to her going

Again the right precedes the law; the law

to college and then to graduate school, at

gives the guarantee that the right of the

least in some minds. Of course, the

woman is protected and supported by the

economic aspirations of the girl's family

legal justice system, thus supported by the

would be stunted, cut off; and this might be

government bureaucracies, thus a normal

especially frightening to a family with

mainstream event. Please spare me the

bourgeois aspirations who are not yet

simian responses born of a simian

bourgeois, or bourgeois by proxy through

understanding of your religion and your foul

the social advancement of the daughter,

place in the cess of dogma you

who is now "with child." Ah! With child. No

misunderstand and dis-understand so you

embryo can be called a child if the

can continue to be the narrow-minded neo-

argument sides with pro choice against con,

fascist you have become in complete

can it? Yes, it.

betrayal of your youth.

Under any of the aforementioned

Do you imagine that you have

circumstances, medically induced

thought all there is to think about on the

miscarriage would certainly be less

issue of safe medical procedures when the

traumatic, or as many of the so called

choice of terminating a pregnancy arises—

middle class arguments in favor of pro

and it is the issue of safe medical

choice would go. I am not as certain as

procedure because the legality or illegality

some of these who support this line of

of abortion is not going to either eliminate

reasoning. I do not assume the only

the need for them or the wish for them if

traumatic thing for a woman in this

illegal, nor is it going to proliferate them if

predicament is to have a baby she does not

otherwise made legal. A legal abortion or

want. Even when choosing an abortion

illegal abortion does not give nor remove a

under the best of pro-choice circumstances,

woman's Right to Choose; her right to

there is loss. Women, after having an

choose is apart from whatever the law says.

abortion, have felt in a way quite similar to

The law cannot give her rights she has

women who have suffered a miscarriage of

irrespective of the law. The law can only

a baby they have chosen to have. When life

help or impede her acting on her rights. I do

begins is not invited here. This is not

not know what you imagine? The story is

support for those who are against the pro-

inferred by the telling, the saying, what gets

choice position. I am not arguing for or

said and how. I loved Alice Buconiglio.

against a woman's legal right to choose.

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

Creating a social context (I did have

October 22, 2016

insemination, pregnancy is still more natural

to bite my tongue not to say matrix) where

in the ways drawn herein. I am, though, a

we honor a woman's basic human right to

bit puzzled by anyone who claims that

choose, and where respecting and

abortion must be made available to a young

protecting a woman's unalienable right to

girl because we would be saving this girl

sole proprietorship over her body are sane

emotional distress by doing so. Does

and reasonable to all rationally minded

anyone who puts forth this argument listen

persons in our society, seems the only right

to what he is saying when he says this:

solution for what some see as dilemma

abortion saves a girl the trauma of a

where others see the choice between

pregnancy.

bearing the embryo-fetus-child and having

Legislation that sanctions a woman's

an abortion as lacking in predicament,

right to choose an abortion is put forward to

whether they are on the side of pro or con.

ensure that it is safe, if it is chosen. The

But my question is this, and I feel that it is

argument presented above, inferring that an

most important to present--do we think that

abortion may or may not be as traumatic for

a girl who might not be emotionally and

a girl as a pregnancy is not a rebuttal for

psychologically fit to endure a pregnancy is

abortion, but one against what others see

able to an abortion?

as a crucial point in their argument. The

If I am not mistaken, a pregnancy

best argument for legislation to get behind a

and a birth are both natural occurrences. I

woman's right to choose is to ensure a

have not yet assumed that an abortion is

woman has a safe choice and not a horrible

also natural, unless that is what we are

dilemma (safe and antiseptic have become

saying, that the natural flip-side of

motifs in the pro-choice argument). The

pregnancy and birth is abortion. I do not

choice is between safe and unsafe abortion

know if this is viable. Disputing the validity

because abortion has been and will always

of abortion being a natural occurrence as

remain an option for anyone so inclined.

are pregnancy and birth is not by necessity

Dilemmas will always exist; problems can

a pro or con argument. In the ways that

ensue. However, with the legal right to

biology and psychology are connected,

choose, abortion presumably will not be the

interconnected, mutually influential, I am

nightmare it was before Roe versus Wade.

not so sure that abortion is a natural

And before Roe versus Wade, the options

occurrence in the same as let us say

before a woman, likely a girl, were

getting pregnant is--even by artificial

nightmarish. But then there were not

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

enough lifeboats on the Titanic, and the

not take Muslim Theocracies to produce

dearth was felt by steerage. Parachutes

men who act on the impulse to control

and lifeboats, however, of whatever variety,

women and seek to put them or keep them

have always been available for the rich.

in second class/second sex status socially;

If every woman is macrocosmic to the universe of being as I hold to be a priori

we have it right here at home in our own homegrown Christian Fundamentalists.

true, then every galaxy of argument for or

What more is there to say about him,

against the legal right becomes irrelevant.

about who he is, what his name is, what his

She is. Her choice is. What happens,

educational background is, or what his

happens for her and to her and to no one

ethnicity is, his religion, his politics, his

else. Is the embryo a someone? The fetus

epistemology, if you will, what are his

is what? Where does personhood begin is

philosophies, and that should be made

going to be a matter of faith for a while, so

plural? All the women on either side of the

we are going to have clashing metaphysics

Pro-choice issue do not countermand a

for a while? I am not here to argue, as I

woman in any of her decisions. They do not

have already asserted above, when life

outweigh her. How could they; I already

begins. I know there are cultures where a

hold this truth to be self-evident, each

child has to undergo a ritual initiation into

woman is macrocosmic to her gender/sex,

becoming a human being and before this

to humanity, to society, to all institutions

his parents have the right of life and death

seeking to levy their weight against her. If

over the thing the child is in the eyes of the

we could prove there was or was not a

culture. I am not here to justify or condemn

personhood present in the fetus, then what

cultural practices in the social context in

would we have to say, on either side of this

which they have arisen, but their can be no

issue? Are there not more than just two

allowance for any cultural practice or

sides here. If we remember the Triangle

religious law that enforces misogyny here in

Shirtwaist Factory fire, we again will realize

the United States, or places a woman at the

that the working poor, the immigrant poor,

whimsy or fanatically narrow minded

the minority poor, the poor poor are not

religiosity we see across the world in some

worthy of parachutes; parachutes of all

religious contexts. A man being allowed to

kinds and forms are expensive, they cost a

kill his sister for eloping is not the same

lot of money to make. Just ask the builders

thing as a woman choosing to have an

of the Titanic. Why should we have fire

abortion, and part of the problem is, it does

exits, or fire escapes; and why not lock

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

teenage girls inside unsafe workplaces,

concerning Republican candidates, that is

and, she said, do not tell me wanting to

horrific. Words are all we have to defend a

deny a woman access to safe medical

woman's right to choose, which is every

procedure is not the same as the greed that

human's right to choose. I cannot take up

lead to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

arms against what is no longer the lunatic

tragedy.

fringe of the Republican Party but the

I am an old fashioned humanist that

mainstream of the Party itself . . . the by-

believes in a universal human nature that is

product of decades of systematic under-

not only worthy of protection but mandates

education and raising semi-literacy as not

our protection. We are obliged. Yes,

only literate-enough, but literacy to emulate

humanity demands noblesse oblige from

and praise, but then we live in a country

every human being toward every other

where a rose by any other name becomes

human being. The simple separate woman

something else. I have to say that anyone

facing this dilemma is everything in this;

who wants to vote for Trump is either an

she is every thought, every choice, every

imbecile or too semi-literate or just greedy

fear, every emotional pang, every anything

enough to imagine himself as a big player

else she might feel. No one can feel for

in the economic world, like so many

her--embryos cannot feel it for her. What

Russian Jews, for instance, here in New

can the fetus feel? Does medicine tell

York, Alice said, deluding themselves as

us? All the arguments for or of the

Jews in Germany deluded themselves right

psychological effects of abortion are mute

up to The Final Solution passed into law

before her singular solitary irreducible

1942. Doing business in Germany as one

voice. Only she faces this; only she can

professor's father had; I had her for a

choose. This seems simple enough to say,

history course back when I was an

but remains difficult for us to believe. Just

undergrad, Alice said. She said the

look at much of what you hear at

professor had written a book about how

Republican rallies, and the mud that gets

Jews in Germany

slung around the issue of abortion and what

Abortion is a woman's parachute, if

has been coined in perfect propagandistic

not her lifeboat, yes, those same things

pitch, Pro-Life. But actions do speak louder

denied to the passengers of steerage on

than words, and the near simian rallies of

the Titanic and why there were so many

the Republicans are scary enough, but

deaths--the lifeboats were filled by class

when Donald Trump leads in most polls

first, and no one thought to have enough for

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

everyone on board. Screw the Irish

who I am, who I might be, could be if, would

Catholics, must have been the collective

be somehow when, where . . . questions

unconscious mandate in the minds of

begetting questions, as I have said before,

contemporary Englishmen. Let's do the

as I have read elsewhere, in other texts,

same to women because legislation must

essays, speeches, stories, both fictional

be punitive first and punitive last and

and non-fictional, blogs, what else have we

provide nothing but lashes between. And

in places where people write or in contexts

why do we continue to lament our nature,

within which they express themselves in

and it is our nature, isn't it? I mean, can we

words written?

say that this propensity we have for . . .

I write. I am a writer. I am writing

what? for creating and enforcing pecking

here. I have written on this elsewhere, in

orders, for fabricating and maintaining false

other words, yet similar words.

hierarchies of socio-economic status and

What words, when words, which

allowing this to dictate out ethics, for

words where, how, the words Alice

perpetual inhumanity to our fellow human

Buconiglio? I used to believe that I did not

beings, for allowing ourselves to

know what I thought unless I wrote; who

understand the idea of human being without

was she, is she, has she been, will she be,

being humane, for permitting fear to rule

will she have been by the time it comes to

our impulses and choices, for thinking

her end? Whatever this says about me,

greed is the only appropriate response to

about her it says about you . . . and you

our insecurities, for applying greater

would have to decide which me this is

pressure on the Self by trying to maintain

inside the text and what that then could say

an unrealizable singularity of being,

about who it is outside the text, if you insist

cracking the shell, so to speak, by this

on there being an outside the text because

gross enforcement of one and only one to

as far as I am concerned, nothing but what

be or not?

is in the text is valid for interpretation . . .

Of course you know that the "bell

interpretation, interpretation, interpretation,

tolls for thee." Why would I assume that you

interprets in its petty pace, how often can I

do not know that? Why should I assume

refer to the same things, over and again

that you do? That in itself speaks volumes

MacBeth and Hamlet follow me until the last

about me, does it not—what I have said

syllable of this written record.

herein at the close in these epi-logic words afterwards; that is, if you were wondering A Monthly Literary Review

Shakespeare has been everything to me, I tried to mean, not knowing for sure 28

THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

what it is anyone could mean by saying thus, Shakespeare has been everything to

the mirror, which is the way any man or any

me.

woman is most successfully an impostor, I wish I could say more—no I do not

wish any such thing. What is this posture—I should, imposture; an impostor I have been

mirror me, mirror me, mirroring, mirroring, mirroring me.

The End

before—there are times I am an impostor in

expect is another thing. I often miss the mark. I don’t have the patience, the tenacity, the something whatever it is I would need to hit the mark let alone the bull’s eye. Targets, she used to say, give her vertigo.

I do not have to do much with my beliefs

Anonymous is Eponymously

other than having made them, holding is so

Woman

still used to be a problem she said. I never

much of shaping, and how to keep my hands know what to do with them in company. I remember when she took a ceramics class, she

by JVR The difficulty anyone faces when trying to connect with another is the I is already a

said she needed to, that she thought it would be good for her, I said I understood.

For a time in the beginning, I used to

plurality. There’s no room left for anyone else it

like coming early before they’d wrap up and

seems or so I presume. Assumptions mature

leave, wait outside the room and watch her

into beliefs, believing into a way of life, living

shape a vase on the wheel; beliefs accrete of

only a way to convince us we either believe

themselves, everything has weight of some

what we think or do not believe what we think.

kind, mass of some kind, even light must weigh

It's only ever through regret that I question how

something, must have some measurable

I live; but I do regret too little too quickly for that

density. The best analogies for the human soul

to be of any use. What else can I say about

are drawn from geology or astrophysics, stellar

how she left?

evolution, if you will. Of course, my beliefs will

Living is always something more or something less than what I suppose; what I A Monthly Literary Review

gain mass and displace space within me; believing can warp perhaps even the time it 29

THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

takes me to think. There is something of the

notice never notice I led myself to believe; I had

physics of stars in the mind; time, space, light,

always made the assumption I could tell special

being, she used to say that they were all of a

things about others, something about how they

piece. Everyone’s to be or not right there

feel their mood at a moment when I caught

within him.

what other others would not did not because

She made beautiful pieces, something

they did not look as I looked, never watched as

Spanish I thought Catalan said to her about

I would watch, as I knew I could. I used to look

them as if they were from Picasso’s Barcelona.

at her intently wherever she and I were

I had always wanted to go to Barcelona since I

together, wherever we would walk sit talk just

was a child and I studied Spanish in school. I

hang around together doing nothing, nothing I

spoke it well, castellano, unvoiced /th/ for ci,

used to say was the sweetest thing to do;

voiced /d/ between vowels; the Puerto Rican

everyone I knew I could imagine just as intently

kids made fun of my Spanish in Junior High so I

as I would when I watched gazed stared at

stopped speaking Spanish to Puerto Ricans

them too.

who were the only people speaking Spanish

My eyes I fixed on her as she had hers

when I was a boy. My Spanish deteriorated,

that night on the silhouettes of the branches of

definitely.

the tree outside my window on the wall in my

She hadn’t been happy for weeks. How

room, night dark, streetlight shadowed dim I

many before I did not add up. There was this

tried to mean say as I looked around me around

terribly unhappy nowhere further she must have

her she and I sitting together apart on the bed

thought, I imagined, I did, I saw it, her eyes, the

not that big actually. I had watched her sitting

world enough full of sorrow look, and I can see

on the bed in the dark before and one time I

her now the same. My world view is horribly or

think I recall she was back lit as she was this

wonderfully Catholic, and I don’t mean

night, the streetlight entering the room then as

universal, but I do, in other ways, the Church

on this night through a triptych of windows like a

was ever present even when we stopped going,

herd of elephants I remembered having said

even when we stopped believing as we should

some time ago how long before I did not

before we stopped believing as we might have,

remember then and do not know now nor will I

stopped believing at all no one had the stomach

again think about calculating, everything in our

for.

lives calculated counted quantified in ways I assumed I could tell little things about

other than counting but counted nonetheless

her, that I could see things in her movements

we see day in day out our lives added

her step her reach her touch of objects about

subtracted nothing ever again of quality in this

her on her face her expression reflection

horrid terribly overburdened by statistics life.

inflection of voice something barely distinguishable in tone that others might not A Monthly Literary Review

I could have, I think, if I had wanted to, calculated just how long, just how much, but 30

THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

what of it now then any when to bear something

used to knowing how far across the evening sky

meaningful in my life her life our life how many

Orion would travel in an hour then mark the

lives do we live anyway? It seemed useless

night sky like a clock.

then and in the future as well. I used to count

I was precise within reason more than

days, though, from one point to another in time,

what someone would say was approximate how

keeping track of events happenings occasions

much money I spent and where over the course

steps through a day no one would care to

of a week ten days maybe more perhaps near

remember let alone be able with certainty to

to the penny impressive the way I could tell time

recollect; all in a day or during a week or weeks

in the night sky to one friend or how many

over the course of a month or months over a

minutes had passed as we walked walking

year; how long it’s been to another, to keep an

along the promenade in Brooklyn Heights one

account in my head, to be able to add up them

night she was impressed I thought how long

with correctness, yes, right and wrong ruled the

ago I can’t recall being able to tell within a few

reflexes of my mind you could say.

minutes how much time had passed whenever I

All of this as I was able to count minutes too, to count hours, judge time passing as I had learned to tell time at night by the passing of the

would wait for her just stepping into a shoe store to see she said.

Who is she? A question no man ever

stars across the sky , how many things I used

asks, not really. But who is she? I ask I don’t

to keep track of I lost track of; how many I was

wonder I don’t persist I want to but I don’t.

able to judge round about near enough to

Where has she been in her life? I then ask, ask

something someone would think was

again, think about long I think; her life, this she,

impossible to mark as I had tracing the path of

not the one she has thus far spent with me, but

stars or the sun across the sky; to know the

every or any she she has been before knowing

time by situating celestial objects in the sky

me? Why should it matter who she was before

seemed straightforward enough, I mean, the

knowing me, who she thought she was, who

sun is always present ever there at hand I used

she wanted to be, who she imagined she could

to play when I was a boy at blotting out the sun

be would be, to be or not who she might have

with my thumb when the sky is clear day in day

fantasized about becoming?

out of course not on cloudy days gray skies

She looked ahead at the wall with the

terminal gray for days one week when we were

shadows of the branches of the tree moving in

out at Land’s End it wasn’t the whole week

time with the breeze that blew, the wall

most people do not pay attention to the sky

perpendicular to the wall with the windows that

during the day or at night the moon is the object

let in the light casting the silhouettes of the

in the night sky most reported as a UFO the

branches on the wall opposite the foot of the

clouds continually day in after day up over the

bed, my bed, the bed she and I were on for a

horizon I did tell time by the stars passing got

time after dinner after dark the very same that

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

put us right where we ended up; all this twisting

October 22, 2016

There is also the problem of selection,

and turning of time, of space movement bodies

you know, of making a choice, how to choose or

people places things events arrangements

not to choose, you cannot not choose she used

whatever have we in words or emotions

to say I agreed how the many selves Self

feelings without words.

presents a surplus of choices from which to

She looked at them as intently as I was

select, this option of options we oftentimes

looking at her, as I recalled having looked

reject choosing one and only one from which to

intently at her many, many times before, as I

be. Do any of us make out which one of the

had always looked at her, tracing the figure of

many selves we should decide is most

her legs in pumps, she had gorgeous legs, slim,

important, once more, one and only, is there

firm, words were useless at expressing what I

really only one to choose, one to be, one to

felt for her, with her, around her, the anticipation

segregate from all the others of this Self of

of meeting her sometimes the most intense.

many selves, how many times can I say that,

Silhouettes of branches appear, the

the way I would, a phrase I became captive of?

shadows of bone fingers at play I remember

How then does anyone decide? What index

she had said, or did I, the branches look a lot

could we use? How many could there possibly

like skeleton hands moving scraping clutching

be from which we make our choice? Question

at something invisible on the wall. The curtains

following question into one response after

up abruptly once again before falling all of

another; responses are many, answers are few.

sudden to a pause a moment between gusts. I

Who am I is a question I oftentimes

watched her, yes; she ignored me; I continued,

avoid or simply do not think to ask, when I want

she continued, as she had, as had I,

to let myself off the hook for not asking what I

unremitting, my eyes fixed on her, hers fixed to

should have asked. To ask or not to ask who,

the wall.

but sometimes what I am is the most asked

She did not turn a sidewise glance my

question of all. How many of us are our jobs

way as she gazed at the shadows, the dark

are our titles are our relationships, what never

around the room but between the bands of light

who? I could ask who now, but more

as they blared through the windows, a trumpet’s

importantly I think at present is the question,

flare in sight I said something out of Africa I

which one am I, who are we is who am I, this I

thought Kenya again imagining elephants in

am in total, questions begetting questions, a

stampede or maybe some Jazz as of the thirties

totalized Self of selves in perpetuity, yes

I think as we said in the seventies all of it out of

continuously continuing, change the only

Africa too, maybe, but too much is made out of

constant she used to like saying, I didn’t agree

that; those are not African instruments in the

but then we didn’t mostly.

hands of Coleman Hawkins or Charlie Parker or Miles Davis.

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

me more important than any of the others at

October 22, 2016

There are masks we wear in the world,

any other time in me what time is there for me

and that’s nature; there are masks we put on

in me where the same as when; no time other

the masks and that’s society, civilization, and

than now, the real horror of existence is the

then there are the masks we wear inside, by

horror that this here now and only now is the

nature, and then the ones that we feel

entire world’s stage, everywhere a stage, every

impressed upon to wear on top of the masks

situation a play to play the play is the thing we

inside, masks on masks inside one persona

know; all the Self as well a stage and

wearing another—we do have a degraded

throughout the life of the Self each Self plays

sense of wholeness but what of the masks we

many selves; we should know this. But what

wear on the masks, outside or inside, how is

happens when the Self adopts the worldview of

this then whole? What makes us complete,

the world, when it marks the rhythm of being by

how do we ever find perfection in things we look

the pulse of today now what is and is by

for when in ourselves we abandon such an

consensus could we ever conclude that where

effort deciding on an incomplete sense of

we have come is only the asylum?

completeness, another delusion by which we

To be at home in the Self, what does it

live day to day, hour after hour, in the minutes,

mean to be at home in this way, I was at home

you know, only moment to moment we live, only

with her wherever we were, but this place, the

moment to moment; the real way by which we

Self’s a place each of us should be at home in.

experience time, image to image, in the

In order for there to be we we have to kill I let I

moments. Life is momentary, that’s all.

be subsumed by we, don’t you agree? She asked.

The veil, life covered by a veil of illusion draped by another veil of other illusions

Where is the I, the It, the We of this Self

delusions lies hopes wishes what we like to call

of selves, again how many seems to be an

dreams day dreams fantasies confusing one

important question but couldn’t be more

with the other confounding the other with

insignificant; we are innumerable, and I am only

another . . . if she could only be a little bit any

speaking of myself, we, the I that is when I say I

the less miserable, I thought; terribly unhappy it

I say we mean we question following question

seemed she was; I said I saw she was

again and again, one after another after another

unhappy, but to myself only, inaudibly, yes, she

and so on, response once more following

was miserable, her mood shifting, changing

response, they are not answers as we know or

rapidly, and afterward simmering long.

should. How uneasy we must feel in ourselves

I knew I saw it in her, I heard myself say

if so many of us inside the Self are strangers to

I knew I saw she was depressed; I heard her for

one another, and we are, you know, estranged

a week, the entire before, her jaw bones

from the Self, each one to the other, alien.

working all the time in the week prior to this night, you could see it just under her ear at the

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

hinge of the jaw, the muscles there getting buff

the failure of all wisdom—who does not think

you might say working-out working-out. She

that he is the wisest person, that what he rests

used to at night while she slept work them her

on is his wisdom as good as any other man’s.

uppers on lowers getting at something deeper

To be the one and only me I needed to

by digging again grinding all drilling in the Self

be at the moment; what would that cost? I

came out in her mouth, a beautiful mouth lips

paused I listened more intently I heard what I

when pursed sometimes in thought inviting, her

had heard before I wondered a moment then

teeth taking the brunt of every dejection every

moved closer to her where I thought the sound

sadness every downturn in life her life lived as

was coming from it was awful I thought before I

she said she wanted to live was not going to

laid my head back on the pillow and fell asleep

live by anyone’s leave by her mother’s ideas of

teeth grating teeth, upper and lower in constant

how a woman should live her grandmother she

battle to win something Pyrrhic who was she? A

said she loved but could never understand how

question I asked but do not ask anymore; a

she lived the way she did but then said she did

question for a time I thought I could answer

understand how it was for her neither one

then thought I might not be able to answer but

particularly accurate.

asked nonetheless then thought I would never

She said once that her dentist had told

answer but continued to ask in awe of its futility.

she should wear some kind of tooth guard while

Who is anyone? Just as valid.

she slept, that if she didn’t she would grind her

Remember, responses are plentiful, answers

teeth down to stubs; everything went into the

very scarce. What time is the right time to know

gutter that week, he said. She imagined that

who another is, the right way to discern what

she could have what she wanted; she said she

should be discerned but never gets discerned;

imagined that having what she wanted was not

is there something anything to discern about

beyond reach. She had not told me a thing, he

another you are in love with, or anything

said, about her decision.

anyone we desire too much to endure not

I remembered at night one time in bed

having? What is it? What is her? What was it

she had let me know about the dentist who had

about her that I loved more than anything in any

told her how she grinds her teeth. I heard her

other at the time, any other of any time I

one night, waking in the middle of the night; she

imagined thought believed said pronounced to

was gnashing them what the hell is that, is that

her why I can’t explain?

her teeth? I asked myself as another self inside

Was it her eyes her legs her smile her

me willing to talk to the others inside of me; I

laugh her cunt? I did love her cunt loved being

pretended well that I was more in touch with the

inside her cunt her wet swollen sometimes

selves of the Self than I imagined others to be

dripping as it would ooze cunt, lapping her cunt

not as well as me of course who does not think

like a dog, as I said to myself walking home

that the smartest or the wisest person—really

after having fucked away a night at her place

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THE FALLING LEAF REVIEW

October 22, 2016

over my lips her cum still in my nose the next

asks mask by mask we bury our selves inside,

day as I woke alone in bed. I clutched my

the layers, an entire archaeology of the Self, the

pillow as I inhaled.

search for Troy was similar? Do I change

Do we have words to describe what

selves the way I change clothes? If there are

another feels when she so apparently feels

so many, why don't we change them as some

something yet nothing feels anything everything

do socks? She asked.

else the same, each fixation all of a piece,

Overcast for more than a few weeks, the

contrary wise nonetheless? What could she do,

skies had begun to break up the morning of the

what would I, should she—all other questions,

day; we were up at seven, dawn came at a few

do you have one? Where was she going? No

minutes before six forty-five. Clouds overhead

one at home, right? Alone at night when she

every day for weeks, we were in at nine, early

was girl, no one home, father working nights,

for ten. I said the night before that we should

mother visiting friends. Ill at ease all week. I

hurry up and wait if need be. Who can say if

could see it. Which one, though, we still have

we must or not, she asked. I said nothing. I

to answer, is chief among all the others inside

don't care if I'm late; it's not a hair appointment.

you me her any one of us, the one, the only, the

We'll wait; they'll fit me in.

I that everybody else sees, hears, has revealed

She had brought her credit cards; she

before her, before me, you and me, which is it?

took one out. I had brought mine; I held it in

Is the I now an it?

hand, I wanted to pay, I looked as if I were

Freud talked of Id, really Es the German

hesitating. I only imagined this later, but

for It; yes, it lives in us, each one of us. Who I

whether I wanted or not worried me for a few

am, though; ego and id what is that It monster

minutes later in the evening as I prepared

that comes up comes out from deep inside you

dinner. She did not want me to pay; I did not

the darkness? Who understands the dilemma a

pay; she paid; I said I could have paid; she said

person faces whenever she decides who she is

nothing. I think of a pair of switch blades in a

going to be, who she is going to become with

movie about teenagers and gangs. I do not ask

whom with what with how to be or to become

myself why. Every human life is plural.

one the other never the same as which one

What kind of person insists on

should I wear among the many masks I have

remaining one and only one, being the same

for wearing in public? The self is not a

always everywhere with everyone everywhere

costume; the masks are the costumes we wear

every when? So much of sanity rests on what

in this play that is life, a dream perhaps as they

others think, so much of it comes out as an

used to say how many centuries ago, life’s a

invisible social straitjacket, keeping you bound,

dream, not as in pop songs from fifties America,

keeping you in, under, tight, the knots, it’s all

but right out of sixteenth century Spain. Which

about the knots, the knots inside the ones out,

mask I ask, you ask, the I asks who it is that

the ones that are called family the others called

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October 22, 2016

friends co-workers bosses police politicians

mythology for me for her for my life for our life

bankers teachers other people everywhere

together.

always other, this other I this other you this

Time spent day-in after day-in, day-out;

other we this other they them those people

she sat for hours on my bed staring at the wall

again for sure how they are.

with the shadows of the branches of the tree

When will anyone ever be free, she

outside the windows, skeleton fingers again I

asked; she used to add, when has anyone ever

had said, how branches and icicles looked alike

been? There are still so many who dispute

and how both looked a lot like bone fingers the

what the I is by nature, she said, how it is plural,

branches shaking in the breeze that blew. We

that it has always been plural, that this

sat together for hours the first night we were

individual human life of mine is multiplicity, yet

together.

remains singular, whole, entire unto itself each

Fierce gusts then long lulls between, the

time, in every appearance. A paradox, for sure,

breeze that blew, skeleton hands, trembling

this is; we face one mystery after another

bone fingers, once more I remember the movie

variable following variable, newly introduced,

Scrooge with Alistair Sym in the title role we are

and with revised calculations, all of them life

islands, all of us, isolated at the same time we

long.

take part in everything connected to everyone.

Jigsaw puzzle pieces falling down,

falling down life is a riddle she said over

I think I whispered I love you.

Donne was wrong she said. Likeness

Sancerre with mussels, a bistro on ninth by

with others easily disappears, even though it

Little West 12th, how long ago? One afternoon,

persists, arises again; every resemblance to

after she had found out before I knew but

another dissolves without fail. Our power to

when? I see a picture of the Old Man in the

draw these comparisons seduces us into

Mountain my Aunt kept on the wall in the

making them over again; our inability to hold

basement by my Uncle Martin's draughtsman's

them lets us treasure them beyond worth What

table, we were up there, I saw it in New

is there for any of us to take hold of, though, if

Hampshire, one summer, it was so cool in the

so much of what we are is ephemeral: all

mountains that July. It had begun to fall apart

holding, passing; all embracing, fleeting,

the year before she died, decades before it

temporary; all memory, virtual, brief, nearly

crumbled after millennia of wind and ice and

perpetually amorphous. To remember she said

snow and rain, my Aunt Catharine died before it

is not to recollect; to recollect is active.

entirely collapsed. Alone, yet in company;

Wordsworth was onto something. I do not say

populated from within, apart from all things, all

remembered in tranquility. Everything liquid

people, among them. Who am I beneath this

evaporates.

apathy I endure. I tried to write an entire

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We walked the beach along the shore

October 22, 2016

prunes from plums, of course an unavoidable

out by Land’s End one summer together, hand

consequence of all this, this splitting oneself in

in hand I like to think, say I can see one

two: Je me deux, she said Rimbaud had said.

morning, early A.M., she had taken one of my

She herself had become like the

favorite photos of myself as I had in hand her

shadows on the wall frozen—architecture music

camcorder to take motion shots of the waves as

stationary in stone, she was and was not

they came to shore on their way to high tide; all

everything, all things that you could imagine;

along the shore on our way to Ditch Plains,

everybody is everything we can imagine and

walking as we would at the lip of the ocean

not anything we can imagine, imagination is not

meeting the shore at low tide; how many times

dead, it cannot die, it is eternal. The portal, the

out there along the ocean by Land’s End, we’d

doorway, the parallax between, in the between,

walk along the lip of the shore, the high or low

to between or not to between yourself . . .

tide surf, barefoot I’d be most of every day out

It's interesting how things lie between;

there, sometimes we’d go twice in the summer .

everything is between something and

. . workmen across the road I see in a flash on

something, the universe of time and space

the roof of the Second House Museum one time

between God and creation, the act, the moment

and another the moon outside our balcony. I

a particle was raised in the void of space-time

watch the moon rise as I glance to Orion, in the

but it’s space-time itself that was created. We

back in the grass catching in a glimpse the

do between ourselves; in every situation we

ghostly silhouettes of the dune grass on the

enter, to enter, to between. There is a great

other side of the road out back. I pause a

deal more going on in anyone's life than what

moment or more to mark the outline of the

we imagine we think we know—to think or not

stars, its form, every thing for form, and then I

to think has been the question even before

turn to the moon . . . the moon is our Goddess,

Hamlet's to be or not, she said. All thinking

a goddess, one among many, how many, a

seeming; what appears straightforwardly what

goddess for everything, Beauty is a woman,

appears straightforwardly can only be an

Justice is a woman, Poetry is a group of

illusion, space is curved, all light bends,

women, who are they, the Muses, the Pleiades,

refraction reflection everything bent the

who else, what else but woman, woman is who

appearance of stars in the sky off-set by the

woman is what woman is when and where and

gravity of other stars one's Self, one's soul, in

why and how . . . the Sea of Tranquility is on the

two, three, all again more yet without gain.

moon; Tranquility is a woman.

Everything happens again without gain; addition

There is everything and nothing in this,

becomes subtraction, division a multiplication;

there is always something else, whatever lies

infinite reducibility becomes a kind of

between one extreme or the other, how we

aggrandizement, she said, every increase a

cling, we cling, we cleave, cleaving we do,

form of decrease, there are, however, ways of

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October 22, 2016

becoming more than one person that do not

around my neck, the one with the medallion of

add up insane; what is being a person anyway.

the Little Flower of the Infant Jesus, Therese of

A person, persona, personae as in

Lisieux. Her head and torso were backlit by the

dramatis personae, a mask the dramatic masks

lamppost light, as I said one night about her

I wear in one situation or another, all of them I

early after having first known her, blaring

wear by nature. But it's the masks I wear inside

through the windows, a halo around her, it was,

that I have to get behind; each self of the Self

the light blared, sounded a trumpet's call, a

wears a mask among the other selves, multiple

stampede of rhinoceroses herded outside my

protections, layer after layer, psychoanalysis is

window in mid air at mid night. I imagine myself

archeology.

saved by an angel.

Schizophrenia is more likely the splitting

I used to be fond of lying awake at night

of the psyche under the pressure of trying to

too alone in the dark of my room watching the

keep one’s Self singular. Who was she is she

shadows of the tree outside my window move in

will she be? Could, would and should are three

time with the breeze as it blew then and another

fools wandering the world she used to say.

time that night as it had nights before the night

She was sitting in the dark, back erect, legs folded under her.

she sat and watched them until dawn, not

Again, she was

nearly as dark as she liked her room to be at

watching the shadows on the wall opposite the

night, sometimes with the shades drawn, the

bed; she said she liked the dark, liked the night,

light filtering light occluding shades she had,

did not fear it as a child, would sit alone awake

shades and curtains drawn keeping the

at night in her room, up in bed, watching the

streetlight out, never like that in my room,

dark everywhere around her moving as it would

streetlight nightlight, I remember when I was a

shapeless shapes she said used to move about

boy how my mother used to keep a night light

before her eyes and on her eyelids as she

on in the hall by the bathroom right across from

closed them before sleep as she used to say on

my room bright as it was the door opened but

the inside of her eyelids. She said the dark, the

sometimes the night light made things worse

night made her feel comfortable. To fear or not

casting shadows as it would the same way the

to fear, what do we teach our children to fear,

streetlight here outside on the corner to the left

maybe the women who decide not to have

of my bedroom windows, a triptych of them,

children are onto something she said but then

would cast shadows of the branches moving

she said maybe they are not onto anything life

about in the wind as it blew outside, in winter

is life is all we have and to get it when you can

the worst she used say it must have been for

is the most important thing. No?

me, shades up always up never down priez

I was watching her watch those

pour moi ma belle douce Sainte Therese one

shadows, my eyes were driving nails through

afternoon in Paris the Cathedral of Madeleine

wood. I fingered the silver crucifix on the chain

down the block from Maxim’s a little card of

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October 22, 2016

devotion from the sweet and beautiful Therese,

mean, to be other and to be another are not the

a shower of roses, spending her heaven

same.

praying for the lost I believed when I was a boy

Could you bear the weight of another's

in her Church in Brooklyn before First Holy

being, any other person's living being, how

Communion, the sun into her room in the winter

much does being weigh, is it impossible to

the worst, low in its arc across the sky, winter

weigh, is it unbearable as others have

sun always in your eyes as it moves across the

imagined, how could we weigh being? We try

sky, for me at least when I’d wake and when I’d

to measure becoming but we are horribly linear

come home in the afternoon. The winter sun in

in our measurements. To stand under another

the morning right through off the wall blinding.

not anything like a pillar, post and lintel, could

What assurance is there about human

you stand like Atlas bearing the weight of the

nature that we take for granted, that was

world? She said her favorite Saint was

tangible enough to trace with the indices of

Sebastian, I said it was the image that let her

mind? What is it about mind that allows itself to

conclude this, that the iconography of his

work as fingers work as hands work as heart

martyrdom his sainthood was what attracted

works as soul? What is there for any of us to

her; the sanctity; you learn to appreciate the

recognize, to tell the difference, to say—what

aesthetics of Crucifixion when you’re Catholic,

can we say? To say or not to say, words fail,

she said. The weight of the world each of us

words fall, don't we too fail fall, everything

helps bear onto every other person, the weight

tumbles, all tumbling a falling into the tomb?

of world we each bear and everyone is cosmos

Tomber you know is the French for to fall, every

and yet no one is; each of us the world and yet

tomb is everybody’s last fall. But I haven't given

just a speck; dust thou art, and to dust thou

up on heart, any more than I have on soul,

returns. I am no larger at times than the mote I

although most of us have abandoned both in

see in my brother’s eye. And I see it clearly.

favor of mind, I mind what I mine in mind and

It's there. Why should I ignore it? My brother

what I mine is mine to mine in mind my mind

anywhere I go.

other than heart? Other than soul?

Would any of us have the resolve to

There are more co-existent exclusivities than can be imagined. Everyone herself the

stand under anyone else, hold him or her up,

universe; every woman a goddess, the

bear his or her weight, his or her weight

goddess, and yet nothing at all like a goddess;

pressing down on any one of us, each of us

there are infinite shades of grey between wholly

who is anyone today or any day before or after,

black and wholly white. Don't try to make me a

who else another—another is not merely one

goddess, she said to me one night. But I

other person, another is in itself herself himself

understand how it is. Every woman is mother

whoever whichever the oddity of anotherness is

of the world, every woman the whore of

that it is not otherness, if you know what I

Babylon, she said. Everyone creator and

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October 22, 2016

destroyer. All creator Gods in antiquity were

part of at the same time pure simultaneity the

destroyer Gods too. Simultaneously every

closest thing physics gets to God.

woman is every other, whatever extremes you

A Colossus at Rhodes I am

imagine her to reach, even if you imagine

daydreaming my days and my nights away as

otherwise her extremes so narrow. How

well, I am ocean sea water in waves one after

anyone can walk straight when so constricted.

another wave each the other swelling as well I

We are crooked, we are broken, we are

would attempting to knock myself down; a foot,

crippled, yes crippled, not merely challenged,

a foot, my future for a surer foot; what is afoot,

so much of American life is the perpetuation of

what are the feet, what feats of wonder do we

one delusion after another every woman

doubt the most?

gestates the universe, every woman aborts the

Rapid rushing water retreating to the

world; all gestation is in illo tempore ab origine .

sea surrounding me, all tumult commingling.

When birthing a baby, it is cosmogony,

Do women turn the other cheek? I

she said once, that sounded like her cousin.

cannot turn the other cheek. My one cheek

No one else can do this, the whole of being and

here swollen from the repeated beating it has

non-being together in mitosis. Every man

taken from her by her hand slip for slap we take

envies a woman’s womb more than I might

to heart or not to heart word for word how I

imagine she envies my cock. Ancient primitive

heart you heart he she it hearts I know nothing

creator Gods were also the destroyer Gods, the

of others as I had been taught to doubt.

bringers of death and destruction, the end time has come.

No ear to hear with, no sound to

There is only me this who I am or who am I to say about from? Mea culpa the Sisters in Catechism class taught us without jeopardy

recognize where are her ears to hear me I

to our freedom. All words are worlds in

speak to her say what I say a tree falls outside

themselves, a universe of meaning she tried to

in the storm a conspicuous loop-the-loop of

say in a word, how words connote do not ever

leaves in the wind falling trunk falling limbs.

denote, all denotation the imposition of some

All of them the same—I knew a woman

ruling elite, some governing body, someone or

the same differently once. I say again what I

some bodies with hegemony, another nice

say about a woman many women any woman

Greek word, as useless though as are all

one more than all of them the same and not;

words, all them these words we say words we

what I say then so much more interesting than

mean at words we think try to pronounce in

the truth, the facts, and what I do say so many

alien tongues wagging all of us like dogs; again

other men have said, but never get to say it

worlds within worlds inside yet other worlds

right she does so much the same even as much

themselves all giving the illusion of being only

other than I turn on the daydream by her with

words how trees fall in the woods when there is

her around her next to away from apart from a

no one there to hear them falling and no sound

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is made a tree falling in the woods makes no

October 22, 2016

I hear a response in my mind my words

sound only a wave a compression wave one

in her voice my voice what voice whose I

does not sin against others but against one’s

cannot make out what has been said. There

soul one’s sole self suffers the sins. The words

are still inflections to be learned. Everyone

of the prayers we were taught we used to

wishes to spend out his life. Does this make

imagine binding us, imagined that being bound

any sense? Touch taste smell intelligence

was threat to our liberty . . . sound is made in

sensitivity to what how when where with whom

the earl; sin is not in the eye of the beholder as

how others change our taste our sense of touch

are sounds in the ear of the be-hearer. The

the skin of your lover teaches you what about

prayers I learned as a boy make now a

touch about taste how to eat when to chew or to

hodgepodge in my memory no better than

swallow, to chew or not chew . . . who makes

prayer.

any sense? Sense is what for whom? Sagacity How many times must I allow her words

is sense, is it not; but what sagacity for whom?

to fall raindrops from a window for her to be

Now we ask, democratizing wisdom as we do,

happy? How many times need I turn the other

try. Go ask a Buddhist monk if you can do that,

cheek? I wait for an answer, why I question her

she said.

about what I ask her when I do my voice always echoes my voice.

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October 22, 2016

DISSOLUTION

BY JVR

Be still, be silent, be sure, she said.

Holding hands, in prayer, Alone, in a knot, I kneeled.

I don't pray anymore, I don't know if I wish I did.

I haven't gone to confession in decades, I don't know if I think I want to go.

I'll never forget before First Holy Communion Monsignor Cross said in the week leading up to the Bishop's arrival Don't chew the Eucharist, it’s not a cookie.

[A Pause.]

Don’t chew the Eucharist, let it dissolve on your tongue.

I wish it were so for you for me, you were like the Eucharist, I wanted to be able to mean, I no longer know why.

I have nothing left but these lines.

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October 22, 2016

Poems by Jay Ruvolo from Piscataqua Press

Land's End is the edge of the sea, but also the brink of everything we stand on. It is a precipice, an opening of the abyss; it is everything primordial in living, thinking, remembering. 90 pages. $14. ISBN 9781939739889.

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October 22, 2016

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