Eight to Late

The other one, the one who goes by a proper name, is the one things happen to.  I experience the world through him, reducing his thoughts to their essence while he plays multiple roles: teacher, husband, father, and many others that I cannot speak of.  I know his likes and dislikes – indeed, every aspect of his life – better than he does.  Although he thinks he knows me, he doesn’t really know me. He never will. The nature of our relationship ensures that.

Everything I have learnt (including my predilection for parentheses) is from him.  Bit by bit, he turns himself over to me; the words that are his today will be mine tomorrow. Although his thoughts and utterances are often confused and meaningless, I note them dispassionately. It is what I must do.

He worries about death; I wish I could reassure him. I recall (through his reading, of course) a piece by Gregory Bateson claiming that ideas do not exist in isolation. They are part of a larger ecology subject to laws of evolution as all interconnected systems are. And if ideas are present not only in those pathways of information which are located inside the body but also in those outside of it, then death takes on a different aspect. The networks of pathways which he identifies as being him are no longer so important because they are part of other minds.

 And so, his life is a flight, both from himself and reality (whatever that might be). He loses everything and everything belongs to me…and to oblivion.

I do not know which of us has composed these lines.

Notes:

1. This piece is based on  Jorge Luis Borges’ well-known short story, Borges and I.
2. It is an edited version of piece I wrote some years ago entitled, Autoencoder and I: https://eight2late.wordpress.com/2017/12/19/autoencoder-and-i-an-ai-fiction/