P L A N T A R C H Y 2 - Critical Documents

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suggest “try for a better sense of story” or “no symmetry and precision without a
shell,” yet it was clear that no one much would listen so why suddenly be polite?
Wanting to consider the danger of becoming overly sentimental or melodramatic,
still the shortcoming was that the reader couldn’t see the dream, couldn’t get to
that instant when nothing else supposedly mattered, so much left off stage that
the last line flubbed the kick it needed. Much too familiar, it was hard to believe
anybody could scream in that situation, yet there was little to draw from save
the songs that one already knew had been sung to manipulate the undercurrent.
Again and again, having nothing to say begged the question of why to tell others
what they wanted to hear. Instead of taking a risk, the writing in blue wasn’t part
of it, the status quo pictured in the failure to make the contest better, a shadow
that hovered on the back of the neck. No one would mention who was involved.
Huddled in a room among many rooms or a street among many streets,
stretching or playing or crying in the morning sun, focus tight against the
windows as if to push through the pane or imagine how much getting to the other
side could do. Things had been learned—that the body flouted itself awkwardly
and needed restraint, that thinking had to accept procedure, that a straying
mind made outcasts—and feeling them wrong, feeling the desire to tear the sky
down and start over, could nothing more be needed than a shared glance or an
agreement to wander furtively, the pleasure of reflected refusal in a sprawl of
expression? What to do with the stories that such recognition inevitably receded,
turned the dream maze corner onto its own emptiness? Maybe it was possible
to wish harder, to force the air to become palpable, to stun what could only be
confusion back to a clear drive to the center or a slow swirling play of folds, skin
glistening and eyes shining, riding the body like a wave of release. Instead, places
one had never seen, functionaries one had never heard of, split the curve, turned
it away, left the coerced participants with a need to stare back at each layer
forgotten or remembered too well, no certain rush of liberation surging around
a fluid bend, itself not final, though there were instants when sun or wind or a
rooted crevice could bring any unit right there, drenched in the burgeoning of a
passing full stop.
But here it was: an inability, a reversal, at the core of all deepest
commitments. The way what the maneuver did not believe animated many
essential maneuvers. Production without belief in production, standards while
rejecting standards, a loathing of smiles or nods that nonetheless smiled or
nodded. The idea of group solidarity spoken by whoever had made the most