Communication.

Jay did not seem to believe that you existed. Admittedly this was an exaggeration on his part. He noted the negativity that was bouncing betwixt me and Tony the moment that he got home. His father had let us in early. It is all ways disquieting to think that two people can be unified in agreement even despite a lingering insecurity about one an other. Have you noticed that? It added to the disquiet of hearing Tony tell me to text Jay because he did not feel “comfortable” in “some one’s home” if that one was not there. He even accused me of lying to Jay’s father when I told him that I would text Jay, and then qualified that I had contacted Jay all ready.

The situation could have not been more Kafkaesque in retrospect than when Jay corroborated Tony’s bull shit by claiming it was “his home” as he lounged in an arm chair, having heard me tell him not to criticise you in your absence, as though might made right. But thank fully we were all smiles the moment the footage was done. Men right? Jay was in toto more open-minded the moment that the work was done. He only accused me mildly of pedestalising you. What ever. He knows that had I not seen the best in people on general principle I would have left Tony at home. Jay and I hit the town and when we returned to O’Harley’s I learned that he was apprehensive about having photographs taken of him. This is the same man who asked if my explanation for your absence was your “exact words”. Who is he to judge me for protecting your privacy? Tony showed up over the course of the night, and Jay left O’Harley’s early. He insisted that it was not owing to issues with his Japanese long-distancer that had visibly affected him over the course of the day. I disbelieve that; Parham and I both could see what was up, and we had both come to the same conclusion independently at the gym earlier.

Of course my mind blairs nonsense as I think this, and it is only alleviated when I write it. Derrida was a genius. He understood how many of our episteme-illogical prejudices come from the prioritizing of the spoken word over the written. Hence I renegotiate now and refuse to call you. Defensively: It is not that I am ditching you. On the contrary, I am honoring the same principle by which I permitted you to ditch me.

The nonsense: My reasoning is circular and therefore irrelevant. Jay’s skepticism owed to his ignorance; his ignorance was evidenced by his skepticism.

1.       I know you are skeptical because you are ignorant.

2.       I know you are ignorant because you are skeptical.

It looks like a tautology. That is only because, though, in one case:

1.       I know( that A is so) because B.

Where as in the other:

2.       I know THAT (B is so because of A).

Hope fully the technicalities do not kill your vibe.

My indignation is that of the Intuitive Introvert. Nothing intrinsically in my explanation, and your excuse, was at all outrageous or out of place. It is totally understandable and common place that one would be apprehensive of a judgemental environment. This does not reflect POORLY upon you as a Communications Major, but Well, for You note the hazards of such a situation.

At times though I suspect that this basic common sense is not so common. It is totally obvious to a person like you or me. Yet to an Extravert like Jay it seems lost at times and lost in time. OBVIOUSLY, given your apprehensions, I cannot read your words verbatim. To be judged out of the context specifically intended for me is abuse comparable to rape in my mind. Besides, I hate people who interrupt a conversation to pull up their phones and read things to me. If ever I prioritise the spoken word over the written, it is to prevent THAT behaviour.

So it happens that since nothing is obvious and few things ubiquitous, (a paradox, since we usually imagine ubiquity only to follow obviousness) I must translate what you have to say into terms that Jay would understand. This would seem condescending to him if I explained it, but only because his own delusions are monarchical. He requires a translator for some thing that was deliberately communicated to me in a way that *I* would understand, neither overwhelming me with things that are out of my context nor sparing me any special privilege in the conversation. To hit that Goldilocks zone between what is theoretically obvious and all too esoteric is intrinsic to good communication, a high art, and it should be just as flattering that I adapt the Truth to my recipient as it is humbling.

And here the accusations of circularity would occur. Obviously, it is Jay’s skepticism its self, of some thing that appears to me totally probable and sensible, that evidences that he occupies a world miles from mine. Of course, he might argue that were I simply “clear” to begin with, had I provided “definite evidence”, then the skepticism would have been absent, yet since I refused to be transparent his skepticism was justified and the fact that the circular reasoning ends with my attacks upon (his character based upon )his skepticism only evidences that it can be reduced to just a childish plaint for being questioned. Yet the confusion could have just as easily been prevented had he listened to (my version of) Common Sense and been generous to your totally sensible apprehensions and my subtle attempts to relate them to him without actualising the object of apprehension: Undue judgement.

I could sum up my point colloquially thus: It was a matter of common sense to begin with that nothing is obvious to every one, however bright( either the thing or the one). That even in SPITE of my efforts to convey this to you (Jay) you do not see it as believable, because obvious, it further re-enforces this conviction. Had I yielded my decency and ready the “evidence” verbatim, it would prove nothing. Your conviction at that point would have been just as arbitrary as your defensive skepticism in actuality, and the occupants of the room, including Tony, would be prone to re-interpret your ([I point to {Alanna]’s}) words out of the context that was several months of correspondence. Yet perhaps I should be flattered by their disbelief. That you seem like an extension of my imagination is not only a profound commentary upon the human condition that CAN be generalised, (even if most do not realise it) but it all so suggests the degree to which we were not only similar upon first meeting but have influenced one an other over time.

Much as in the way that one cracks open a book to a random page and has a different impression of it upon reading a fragment than when that same fragment is read at the end of a reading that began at the book’s beginning, so it is, phenomenologically and ethically, it is as the post-structuralists attested: When we think that we have finally understood it we are further at understanding it than ever. There is no Truth in the text that is ubiquitous; it depends upon the situation of the reader. Even in writing this I had the nagging feeling that I was evading the Truth, that there was some thing I was SUPPOSED to say that I avoided. But really all I did was clear away the SEEMING Truth of the imagined accusations. And now that I see that, I can complete the circle: Returning to the same point of criticism when the authority DEMANDED that Truth of me, I can now proudly say: There was none to begin with! And I have said every thing I set out to and needed to.

Dm.A.A.