The Essay (Part 2 of 3)

Madame Bleue’s Essay, Part II

Which came first: the mind or the womb? — I think about this frequently: Creatio ex nihilo. Poetry out of nothing. Now, if the male part is a thing, and the female part is nothing, literally “no thing”; and not less than every thing in the world emerged from the abyss before ever entering it, then certainly the womb predated the mind. But the mind is not the world: the mind encompasses the world (it’s sort of a womb from which the world cannot manage to get born from). — So now we need to figure out if the concept of womb, being an aspect of the world, is altogether OF the world or only IN the world (thus in some sense also WITHOUT the world, in the way that one’s household god can be an indoor-outdoor pet). Can it enter and leave at will that borne from which no traveler returns? My answer is: Yes. Yet we should probably also clearly define our terms, because knowing now that both the womb and the mind are beyond the world leaves us right where we started: unable to answer which came first: 

The mind is a three-dimensional sphere of darkness embossed on a 2-D plane of infinite space; the sphere’s volume can be inferred by a pinpoint of light that eternally reflects off its glossy whatness — nobody knows the source of this light, and everyone secretly wishes that it would put itself out (the way that Othello “puts out” Desdemona). The mind is a generator of thoughts; and, as Blake sez, “One thought fills immensity.”

So that’s the mind; now what is the womb? 

Imagine a garden — a fertile patch of fresh soil. Lo, a mist comes up from the ground and waters the garden, so that it may generate living creatures. Now let’s take this demesne of earth into our vast, divine hands, and fold itself upon itself, and seal shut the far end thereof while leaving the other end open, so that it resembles a purse or an attaché case made of fleshy clay. Place this marvel between two legs and snap a black-and-white photograph: Now you’ve got yourself a womb. This is the origin of everything, even the enigmatic mind.

So, with that problem out of the way, I drape my hands around my friends Jacques Rivette and Luis Buñuel, and we walk out into the countryside and survey the half-knowns of this expanse. We stroll over the rolling hills of dark-green grass, which is kept closely cropt by the goats and rabbits that live hereabouts.

We enter a cantina, and Jacques Rivette and Luis Buñuel and I all order a drink. We take a seat at one of the round tables, and when the nearby customers engage us in a Q&A session, we all answer them in unison, speaking a mixture of French and Spanish. 

Before leaving the cantina, we ask the customers and the proprietor (this place happens to be owned by a beautiful woman named Margarita Carmen who came and sat down and joined our conversation) where the nearest airport is. And they tell us, so we go there.

Now we take a plane to a remote alcove of leaves in the Congo. When we land, our ship simply vanishes into the verdure. Nobody knows that this place exists. Then we buy another ticket and travel to the U.S. Pentagon.

When we enter the tiny office at the rear of the place that is filled with a handful of banksters and stooges, we greet them all with an holy kiss (just like we did when we visited the Vatican heads earlier — I forgot to tell you about that trip; I’ll try to remember to relay it later: it really wasn’t that exciting, that’s why I spaced it); then, after we’ve all taken our seats at the table, Jacques Rivette and Luis Buñuel and I, all in unison and speaking a mixture of French and Spanish, say:

“Really? This is what you wish to do with your talents?”

And the banksters look at each other like “What? Why would anything that we executed be our fault?” while the stooges all shrug as if to say “Who can help this great obscenity that we’ve dedicated our lives to nurturing?”

So we get up from our seat and shake everyone’s hand heartily and say “Keep up the… work,” omitting the word “good”, which we intended to say before that final word “work”, because we cannot bring ourselves to have a positive attitude about what this most recent band of munchkins hath wrought.

Then we visit the zoo. We go straight to the giraffe cage. We watch the giraffes pace back and forth in their 5-by-5-meter enclosure made of steel bars and concrete. Then we all begin to cry.

Mary Magdalene now appears on the horizon in the garb of Mother Russia and tries to soothe us, but it’s no use: we’re truly saddened by this most recent plot twist — it doesn’t seem that we’ll be able to edit ourselves out of this one:

“I’m not sure that I can end this piece on positive note,” I say; “I’m not sure that I can even make it to the next part — so this might just end up being a classic two-part essay.”

“That’s fine,” Mary comforts me with her sultry voice; “remember, the composition of a literary masterwork is exactly like human life: you can just end it whenever you want. Nothing matters. You tried your best; that’s more than enough. Who cares what follows!? You’re not a giraffe — giraffes have hooves, thus they can’t shoot a pistol. You, however, were blessed with five digits on either hand. Take them; use them. Open your jaws; insert the gun’s barrel, aim it upwards: make sure it’s pointed at the roof of your mouth, so that the speeding bullet shall enter your brain. It will be over in an instant. A painless exit, at the right time. Then we can couple in the spirit; and we shall take precautions this time, so that another world does not break forth.”

A slight smile begins to form on my lips, while I dry my eyes. “But what about my friends here, Jacques Rivette and Luis Buñuel. I don’t want to leave them: I would rather put up with the impossible hardships of this existence than to be separated from the best comrades that I’ve ever known.”

“Jacques Rivette and Luis Buñuel will always be with you, no matter how many dimensions you break,” Mary Magdalene strokes my hair with her red phantom hand. “But they’re right here on the bench with you — why are you speaking about them as if they’re absent already? They can speak for themselves.”

So I turn to Jacques Rivette and Luis Buñuel and ask: “Is it true, what this scarlet woman has claimed?”

Now Jacques Rivette and Luis Buñuel answer as one, speaking a mixture of Spanish and French. They utter platitudes of reassurance.

So, being convinced, I squeeze the trigger and am lifted into bliss. The giraffes are all freed from their captivity, and my essay comes to an end. All my points are accepted as proven. I am awarded the medal of persuasiveness. And, although this is only of secondary importance to me, my essay ends up selling extremely well, on the posthumous market. This we confirm, in spirit-form, by looking over an executive’s shoulder at his balance sheet. (He’s one of the goons who works for the publishing company.) Moreover, those rabbits that I mentioned earlier, who were grazing alongside the goats upon the grass in the rolling plains — well, they were previously only sheep-sized, but now they’re as big as bulls. This is really exciting.