Tuesday July 30, 2019

Neighborhood cats greet me as I pull up in front of my home upon my return from Des Moines. We exchange hellos, after which point the cats go back to lounging on their sides. Settling onto a couch, bags only partly unpacked, I begin to think again about these trance-scripts. The best I can say about their origins and effects, I tell myself, is that through them I seem to be speaking to myself across time. And yet, in saying that, I find myself immediately wanting to add, I don’t just mean I write so as to be read by myself in the future. That much is obvious. What I mean, rather, is that some future version of myself is the one seeding these trance-scripts, communicating backwards, bootstrapping itself into being. I grant the paradoxical, seemingly impossible nature of that claim — but paradox or not, it remains to my mind the hypothesis that comes nearest to truth, and that thus best approximates my condition.