Exposing the coppice espouses the conceit

Ethan Switch - Friday, 13 November 2009 - 23:25:46 - print it raw

Audibly, and well into the second hour of his philippic against the then young, but brash, treasurer of the second wing, one Linsel Marche paces east to west and back again. Much in the spirit and the heat of the debate — correction — along the flow of vitriol, the seething voice of Marche versus the incumbent and shadeless figure, otherwise known as Author Cahn, electrifies the room in a way that static charge stands dreadlocks.

Between these two men, the amanuensis is visibly fraught; drenching himself in streams of sweat, broken pencils and jammed knuckles. Without whose unsaid presence the record of this day would go only unrecorded, but not unreleased.

Cahn, at the centre of the room, stands and takes a heel against the diatribe from the peripatetic Marche. (Fresh from another trip, but this time not without picking up a nasty rash on his hand that developed into an even nastier rash along his backside, crawling up his left side.) Between these two floorboard combatants stands a legless chair.

The bloodshot Marche contests that the current situation, of which they stand, is a mere presence of mind. The absence of the chair's legs, though still of a chair, representative of their orphan state. Cahn, on the other hand, muses that while the secondary evidence imports that the chair exists without legs, cannot in good conscience argue to its existence.

Quite, that while they may believe the inherent value of existence with acceptance, their judgement as to the evidence of appliance should stand as well as a chair missing its legs.

Further on his proof, Marche takes one of the broken pencils and jams said writing tool into the knuckles of the poor boy Chekov. Now reaming of pain, now silent and calm. As the two take turns in furthering their argument, with the screams of silence echoing down the hall, they find that they both themselves are constructs of each other's and neither's mind.

It is here, at the dénouement, as it were, that they confront their own non-existence and wonder, what do you call a chair with no legs?