A MOUTHFUL OF PENNIES PRESENTS: DENDRITES (VOL. 3)

_____________________ _________________ _________________ _

On to the next moment.

Was that our allotted life, an incessant testing of the tensile limits of these near imperceptible vacuums that in part comprise our cognizance? This followed by a fleeting recess in order that we may measure our instruments. To quote Peggy Lee quoting Jerry Leiber quoting Thomas Mann: “Is that all there is?” Is that all there is:——spill-and-coil-and-witness-and-move—spill-and-coil-and-witness-and-move—spill-and-coil-and-witness-and-move—spill-and-coil-and-witness-and-move—spill-and-coil-and-witness-and-move—spill-and-coil-and-witness-and-move—spill-and-coil-and-witness-and-move—spill-and-coil-and-witness-and-move—spill-and-coil-and-witness-and-move—spill-and-coil-and-witness-and-move——

No! There’s more. How often do we forget that what we discover with these instruments is a truth only relative to the instrument implemented? Yet, we habitually live here in the echo of a crowded hollow; we inhabit a theater we for our part create.

It was no wonder we often feel that life might only be maneuvered through by becoming one’s own audience. It was no wonder we sometimes notice that we’ve slid into a center seat in a middle aisle. We watch the film: spliced, taped, and scored towards a recognizable narrative structure and genre by young, conglomerate chimeras we call the self. This conceptual substitution—this thing that seemed to be formed from a slack mass of compacted fragments, while each particle of these fragments themselves are likewise only but a pile of disparate measures, which cling like wet garments and remain so by a mutual pursuit of functionality—this bundle.

Say the word: self. Say it again: self. Say the little syllable: self. Say it again: self. Feel how it plays alone at the utmost edge of your mouth—of you.

Self. A concise whistle along the middle curl of a mass of lashed muscles suspended in the mouth; then with a succinct roll of the vocal cords comes that tap of the tongue where the enamel scoop of the maxillary central incisors (11 and 21) taper to sit in the alveolar ridge; subsequently, under another continuous stream of breath, the vocal folds cease to vibrate as the bottom lip softly presses at the caps of the top front teeth: self. Is that us; is this entity best encapsulated and best described by the catchall, audible, mechanical wave of pressure and displacement that results from this sequence of events? Was there an entity somewhere in that closed order? Culture the whole world over seemed a ceremony to honor that closed order.

Say the word: self. Say it again: self. Listen. Say the silly little syllable: self. Say it again: self. Listen to the sound: self.

Then there was the chomp on nothing that produces the little letter I.

Self and I, a myriad of supple mirrors and chromatic lenses perpetually rearranged through the fluid to intimate the infinite image guessed at as required by a particular moment. Believed by whom? Who is it that plays interior decorator with these reflective planes and colored, gelatin filters? Where is it? What should we call it?

_____________________ _________________ _________________ _