Friday, January 8, 2010

skit #91: my phantom twin

We've met a few times before. Maybe more, probably continuously. You often forget my name, my face, my voice, my dimensionality. But, no, I never forget you. So rarely apart, we are. To be politely forthright: who else would complement you like I complement you? You can count anything as two, but a pair is rare.

A while ago, you began. You exist on the terms of standard contract that precedes your existence. It's around, somewhere. Unimportant details, very standard. All the big stars sign it. Chock-full of loaned matter, you are.

And more specifically, I've had your sort before. Quite mammalian, silly manes, rabid fabulists, right. All pulpy and gangling, all full of whimsy and wrath. Certain you're yourselves forever. But each of your sort so inevitably returns to me. Or I return to them. Like rainwater reposited into a river. An assimilation either way. Right back to how things were before all this particle jockeying.

All predictably spry and youthful. A new body. You roamed, wanderlusty. As though you could go anywhere outside me. Savoring the pittances earned by your franchised life. Of course, you own nothing you possess. You possess only facets of me. Other subcontracted yous. To them, though, they are them and you are me.

I've never been ubiquitous, per se. But universal complementarity probably isn't too different from ubiquity. Maybe instead of being yourself everywhere, you're everything else everywhere. It doesn't sound glamorous, but it's essential. What could any one thing be without everything else? A universe composed of singletons is scarcely a universe at all.

We're both here because we have to be. I'm without you as you're without me. Fifty-fifty, standard between all the other mes and other yous.

You're shaping up nicely. Proud to partner. I've been around, seen things, heard things, just like you have. Some of my complements don't make much use of their loans. You know the types. Barren moons, gratuitous plasticwraps, comfortable mosses, remote barnacles.

I admit I'm being a bit flippant. Judgmental. Who knows who I complement. I am haunted by my phantom twin I have not yet met. Who will chastise me over my misspent material expenditures. Galactic billiards and menageries, a cosmic waste. Read my soul off like an inventory of cheap trinkets.

But we make what we can with what we have. My phantom twin made me, after all. But you and me, I think we're not bad. Not bad at all.