Millions of leaves

Millions of leaves of paper I have marked
since emerging from the walls of that dark city.

Tonight I went through my papers from Bluffton and Northeastern in an attempt to find my copy of Bruno Latour's essay on "immutable mobiles." I found, instead, the essay I wrote about the case of the immutable mobile known as a church bulletin. Interesting, but not helpful.

I also found some of my first work with critical theory. I realized, for a moment, that I was far less trusting of theorists back then, that I did not immediately latch onto every abstraction. That I had a far better grasp on application before I understood it so well.

What has happened? Some sort of reduction, I'd imagine. The only reduction I haven't quite made has been with Kenneth Burke. I think that's because I keep revisiting the original text. When reading Dave Blakesley's explanation of Burke, "Elements of Dramatism," I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated because I could see the gaps where he was reducing for the sake of clarification. At other points, when he filled in gaps for me, I wanted to return to the original, to make sure that I agreed, that Burke hadn't been coy and slipped in some other thing to trigger that rush.

That's why I love theory, and always have. It's that brain rush. When everything makes sense all at once and there are no words. No pictures. Pure intuition. It's in this way that I understand James Watson's memior of finding the double helix; he's cocky while at the same time unsure, but he relies completely on intuition (so he says) for most of his time there. Lucky Jim luckily is male and his intuition is seen as revolutionary, not weak and emotional.

Emotional? Me? No, not as Watson imagines.


Such claims to the end have an absolute duty. The revelation was written to fit the genre, so it plays absurd, a bad drama on screen. It uses some conventions, to revel in the reveal and promote unity. Time, plot, a used, ordered world, seems included in this eternity of absurdity in play. Mocking not the core of real prophecy, but those browning leaves about it, it rules the way they create an understanding world. The end is near. A harmless arm comes out to embrace us all, and still we duck away.