This Guy! A Sketch stolen from Jorges Luis Borges

Vol. 1 Issue 31

Weird! I wrote an intro to this entry so that you'd have some idea what the hell I was trying to do here but it disappeared. I just noticed May 18th. This posting has been up since May 13th. Does blogger.com have moderators that edit out the shit they don't like? Part of my posting seems to have been edited out!

Anyway, the following is an exercise I did based on Jorges Luis Borges's "Borges and I." Here is a link to the Borges so you can see how this type of exercise if supposed to be done by a real writer.

http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/00/pwillen1/lit/borg&i.htm

This Guy!

There’s this guy with a real long last name that’s hard to spell but easy to say. He’s supposed to be around, getting this name of his called off and checked off the appropriate lists every-so-often, but these times are rare, in comparison. The importance of this calling and checking is debatable. I get always get dragged along with him for logistical reasons.

            Rare in comparison to what? Well, when I do get dragged along with him, I would say it takes up as much of a quarter of my week’s time. The other three quarters of the week, my time, are spent dealing with the effects and consequences of what he did in his quarter of the week. But even after dealing with all his fall-out I’m still left with plenty of time to waste. I cook. I drink vodka. I sleep a lot.

            Every-so-often he calls others with similar last names just to check-in, to confirm that yes, it is still he, and not I. He talks about the pages that he wrote. What would happen if he stopped the routine name checking, the calling to confirm? What would this do to I? Nothing, but there are others, the ones that must called; they would be affected. They may sense that perhaps he has become I, of course, they would have different terminology.

            He, representing a perfectly all right, mentally sound and jolly-as-can-be individual. I, being quite the opposite. So in reality, the calling and the checking-in is not for I, nor for him, but for them. This is a whole other realm.

            Both of us agree on this - pages don’t mean pages, so all those pages and pages of words that he wrote, pages that belong to us, again for logistical reasons, are getting really heavy to carry around. They are baggage There is nothing that he would like more than to have someone else take away these pages and pages, only preferably someone more photogenic, someone with more pizzazz, someone with a last name that is easier to spell. So what are pages then? Well, all I know is what they are not.

            It would be like converting all of your assets into gold bricks and then carrying these bricks around with you everywhere. Have you ever tried buying a soda at a bodega with a Fort Knox style gold brick? I have, well actually it was a Red Bull, but still, it was difficult. Even worse was trying to get back correct change. Believe me.

            It would be like this if the pages and pages were assets, and worth their weight in gold, or lead even. But they are not. He pretends they are. I wish I could, but I know too much.

“For what does not exist cannot will.” This is what Nietzsche says. “Only where there is life is there also will (TSZ 2^nd Part). So then, if there is will, then there must be life. If I will, then I must exist.

            But he, the other, he wills and wills all day long. Has we proven Nietzsche wrong?

            “What already exists, how could that then will to exist!” It cannot. I cannot will myself into existence, and yet he never gives up trying.

            We both struggle with deductive logic.

            A bad review of his work, two-thumbs way down, a group of people standing around talking about how obnoxious he is, or that he smells bad; “I had to sit next to that guy, man he stinks so bad. He ruined the entire movie for me.”

            He doesn’t know that a bad review, or even a fuck-you, is more than he should expect. He doesn’t see the justification and joy that being hated and ridiculed could bring. You cannot will hatred into existence. Hatred must be willed from existence.

            He wants cosmic fly-overs on this birthday, galaxies to be re-arranged to his choreography, atoms to dance to his garage band remix. He sees things on a grander scale. I’d settle for having someone learn how to spell our name properly.