- Selections from The Zygote Epistles
ix.)
Dear Zygote,
Lucky for you: You can’t pick up that robocall’s race-cry-out limnic eruption ~~ #$^@*!?*^.
Shit happens as Whiteness shovels around
on its peg leg. whump
This means I might have to teach you key habits of Melville’s whole novel
by borrowing algebra’s alphabet. Through using some logic equations:
A. Forms of propositions
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a. Moby Dick is a whale.
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b. A whale is a mammal.
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c. Moby Dick is Ahab’s enemy.
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d. Moby Dick is not the devil. [End Page 105]
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e. Ishmael is not albino.
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f. Ishmael is Moby Dick’s friend.
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g. Ishmael is not God.
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h. Moby Dick is not a fish.
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i. Moby Dick defeats Ahab.
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j. Ahab is meaner than the devil.
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k. Ishmael is everyone’s friend.
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l. Ahab is not Ishmael’s enemy.
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m. Moby Dick is albino.
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n. No one is meaner than Ahab.
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o. Ahab is meaner than anyone.
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p. God is not a whale.
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q. The devil is no one’s friend.
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r. Ahab has no friends.
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s. Ishmael does not defeat Ahab.
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t. God is not the devil.
B. Exceptives and superlatives.
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a. Everyone except Ahab fears Moby Dick. (Zxy ≡ x fears y)
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b. No one except Ahab can defeat Moby Dick.
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c. Moby Dick is the only albino whale.
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d. Only Ishmael is a friend of Moby Dick.
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e. No one is meaner than Ahab except the devil.
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f. There are other whales besides Moby Dick that are feared by Ishmael.
Helpful abbreviations.
a = Ahab; d = the devil; g = God; I = Ishmael; m = Moby Dick; Ax ≡ x is albino; Fx ≡ x is a fish; Mx ≡ x is a mammal; Px ≡ x is a person; Wx ≡ x is a whale; Dxy ≡ x defeats y; Exy ≡ x is an enemy of y; Fxy = ≡ is a friend of y; Mxy ≡ x is meaner than y; Sxy ≡ x is swifter than y. [End Page 106]
So then. I = Ishmael. Oh might as well, since x is a mammal, and they’re pretty quick. Besides which,
as soon as I slip into cypher’s forecastle I’m free. You cannot undo
the done-unto-you, but you can forgive it. Tonight I’m feeling like forming ex-expletives,
something like apeshit’s shapeshift to lippy-glug happiness. Zygote, you’ll get it:
every egg has an X, every leg wants a dress, Moby Dick is no devil,
which means every Ahab must locate the beings on whom he can offload the whale
of his own inner torment: Could be the grave disease of our day. . . . I = Ishmael.
Px ≡ x is a person. A person: Life Speck, by now,
maybe you’re newly sized to a raw sesame seed. Already you are [End Page 107]
what World will call girl or a guy, but here’s the P.S.: Female = the default sex,
probably precisely because x is swifter than y, where here we let swift mean gifted
in souped-up stillness. Why is it Zxy ≡ x fears y? Sometimes y really starts to stick it to x and somehow
that’s supposed to be Sxy. Maybe y will get a chance to leaven himself. . . . Sometimes Moby is just a vegan musician, whereas,
Zygote, I think you more or less fish-person, or FxPx. Hang on to the winch of all this shape-shifting!
Being able to sidle the glide of another is what preserves us. And who would deny that Biblical Ishmael doubled
as more or less donkey-mankind, or that Melville’s narrator-self
is spec consciousness? Sentences are sentience’s avatars,
but alas this plows us into new ships far at sea. d = the devil. And cruelty’s Mxy. Both [End Page 108]
of them gather as I not quite whistle Ishmael-Dixie and maybe twelve nieces shall I beget,
who will multiply all that sits opposite meanness exceedingly, at the same time as they become
badass in archery. Goddishness is not a whale, isn’t something given to is-ing or not, so let us declare-ask
a quotient: The first1,000-year-old person’salready been born?
Zygote, Life Speck, oh, just say...