The Man with the Arm

Abstract

1. Retrospect a: We spent time surrounded by our peers, post collegiate in a college town, coffee, beer, teashops, cinemas, but we pointed and gaped. Look at those silly men with baseball caps, look how they walk around, hear their excuses for conversation and so on. I lived in a zoo, wandering along the proposed path and avoiding what was not on display, and though I was also caged, there I lived with my furry mate, and we might gaze into the cage next door, but we could always turn to one another, have babies, and impress a great keeper, the ignorant organizer, the sloppy maker of categories upon a whole earth who had placed us there. b: He kept looking for his arm. c: Walking down the street was not a thing of affirmation in the sense that looking into a mirror and recognizing ourselves could be one; there you are but in another place. It affirmed in the same way looking in the mirror can be profoundly displacing, as if you, because of the fact of your image, were of the mirror more than looking into it, and so you think of yourself as a mirror facing a mirror, you've seen that, your face infinitely repeated and you believe, therefore dense. In that way, it may well have been frighten ing, except for our ability to face one another and poke our ribs about it. It's only a mirror, and we'd wanted to believe. Ah, love and the mutual. We could look about in fear of being confused with our peers by a grand evaluating stranger, someone who ought to confirm our difference with a plaque and a key to our dream city, make us famous for rising above. But we had only join the hands we possessed in order to feel righteous and without the guilt of arrogance which might have ensued for lack of substantiation had we not been together. d: When I was in school, people were always telling me I was getting my education, and when I was done with school they said, now you have an education.