Opinions Before Lesions


Maybe your doppelganger didn't understand its role, its obligations. And so it wandered off to the fish ponds at the edge of town. And it scared people because it had a funny accent. Or it didn't know what its own name was. It answered to almost everything. This doesn't mean we can act as if the outcome was predictable. Or that someone like Grendel was right to go in first, to try to take out the uninvited horde because he thought they might have designs on his mother. Right is right, after all. And you can't really determine why something isn't right until at least an hour and a half has passed. Otherwise, you are so close to the event, you can't even legitimately call it an event. You can't know how it differs, in its boundaries, from every other string of endless moments during which nothing of any significance happens at all. It's like jumping off a cliff when the cliff is no longer located where you thought it was. Perhaps it has been moved. Or perhaps you simply remembered its location incorrectly, as has been known to happen when it comes to our most important places. Like the meadow with the cement figures buried in it. They had no faces. We wanted to sculpt some, but no one brought along a chisel. Perhaps our fingernails would have served just as well, but we will never know. Those days seem as far away now as the shores of Delaware. We have no hope of reaching them. And yet, we pine after them with such vehemence and fury, the vocal coach himself has begun to get concerned.