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Basis
- University of Iowa Press
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30 Basis Things were simpler then, the early 1950s, and things which seemed too sad or difficult to say sometimes went unmentioned. Even formal documents like these in which we think to find absolute congruency journeyed from the truth. The trouble is, the ways around a thing unsaid are myriad and free, whereas chronology isn’t, not usually. And so these the records of my life begin with a skip and a stutter, the claims and authenticity of one emptied by the dates given deadpan by the other. On page two, for instance, where legally I’m born to them, my age of eighteen months 31 has been inserted. Then my name is granted to me, new, which means in all the text that’s come before this I’m the one I’ve never heard of. Nothing can be fixed about the circularity of this, but in the space of these few pages, a great deal is amended which, in the certificate of birth, can be consolidated: a woman lies down in simple substitution and does as she’s told, a different man discreetly leaves and is awakened with good news. There is my birth-date, a weight dropped into it at ten p.m. Only names [34.201.69.22] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 10:17 GMT) 32 have been changed, a legality. I think we are embarrassed for these documents, for their methods and their awkwardness, for the problems that they meant to fix, for the way they must, of necessity, conflict. And I am too cheaply thrilled by mention of my prior name, kept secret for so long, maybe it’s private. What is one to do with such a thing even as it makes longsettled things ring wrong or right? Say, for instance, it’s the name you gave to a dog, or the name of a town you came to stay in, say that it’s a name you’ve hated ever since a certain incident with a certain stupid dress, say that it’s a name 33 that seems to call you, unaccountably, on every hard or hidden thing you’ve done, what then? This name is neither something meant to be nor something never meant. What can it represent? I slept and dreamt, I gazed and must have fed. Alias from an alien life, skipping stone of kryptonite, remaindered tag from my creator, treasure, relic, this is what: you are too late to be a basis and must stay astonishing. ...