This isn’t a story, it’s a passage. I found it when I was cleaning out—throwing out – tons of old notebooks, notecards, bookmarks, folders, pamphlets and pencil stubs that I’ve kept for decades in case I might need them sometime. Enough is enough, and with glacial slowness I have begun sorting through and mostly recycling this stuff.
I kind of liked this, though. I think it must have come from the early 1990s, or the late 1980s because I was still in the eligibility arena. I might have been having a bad day, and I might have just finished reading some William Gibson. Definitely the Gibson.
Here goes:
I print my fiction on paper recycled from work.
One side; the scripture of the Cult of Eligibility; on/off, yes/no, get/don’t get, right/wrong, the code and mystery of the bureaucracy, the illusion of objectivity. Words transparent, dogmas bleed through; if your life trips all the right switches, you too can Belong.
The other side holds the map and manifestation of noeveryplace; the bioelectric spark and dance through the gray meat tunnels of there and now, virtuously active, virtually actual, actually real.
Is this integration?