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

1. a. Moby Dick is a whale.

2. b. A whale is a mammal.

3. c. Moby Dick is Ahab’s enemy.

4. d. Moby Dick is not the devil.

1. e. Ishmael is not albino.

2. f. Ishmael is Moby Dick’s friend.

3. g. Ishmael is not God.

4. h. Moby Dick is not a fish.

1. i. Moby Dick defeats Ahab.

2. j. Ahab is meaner than the devil.

3. k. Ishmael is everyone’s friend.

4. l. Ahab is not Ishmael’s enemy.

1. m. Moby Dick is albino.

2. n. No one is meaner than Ahab.

3. o. Ahab is meaner than anyone.

4. p. God is not a whale.

1. q. The devil is no one’s friend.

2. r. Ahab has no friends.

3. s. Ishmael does not defeat Ahab.

4. t. God is not the devil.

B. Exceptives and superlatives.

1. a. Everyone except Ahab fears Moby Dick. (Zxy ≡ x fears y)

2. b. No one except Ahab can defeat Moby Dick.

3. c. Moby Dick is the only albino whale.

1. d. Only Ishmael is a friend of Moby Dick.

2. e. No one is meaner than Ahab except the devil.

3. 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.

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

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

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...