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Back The Presence of Absence
Chapters (40)
  1. also by simon van booy
  2. the presence of absence
  3. Title Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Prologue
  7. the presence of absence
  8. Part One
  9. 27.
  10. 26.
  11. 25.
  12. 24.
  13. 23.
  14. 22.
  15. 21.
  16. 20.
  17. 19.
  18. 18.
  19. 17.
  20. 16.
  21. 15.
  22. 14.
  23. 13.
  24. 12.
  25. 11.
  26. 10.
  27. 9.
  28. 8.
  29. 7.
  30. 6.
  31. 5.
  32. 4.
  33. 3.
  34. 2.
  35. 1.
  36. [quick black]
  37. [scene change]
  38. Part Two
  39. acknowledgments
  40. a note about the author

Most books lie about all that. Questioning the voice is not rewarded. But I’m tired of the deceit, even by omission or by habit⁠—which is why, before I hand over the reins of this story to you, I need to point out that every person is, at the very least, two people simultaneously.

The first split occurs in childhood, the moment you say something that is not truly how you feel. From that point forward, you have a second voice to negotiate your way through the world, while the first voice retreats. This is the person I hope I’ve been speaking to: the one behind the curtain. Remember that here, in this place, we’re not obliged to defer intimacy. Trust is immediate. In this book, duplicity is acknowledged. Here, small but determined waves of language move between our shores.

So, will you run with me in the wilderness, side by side, like the animals we once were and will be again?

Sorry.

Sometimes I get carried away by sudden gusts of feeling. Especially now, in this cool, hard bed, I can move up and down with a button, like some navigational instrument as we row through the dark toward morning.

By the way, I’m not the first person to point out a duplicity of the self, the idea of a first and second voice. It’s everywhere in art: a mirror in which you see a version of yourself that’s been hiding.

Remember Ibsen’s A Doll’s House? Specifically at the end of the play, that moment Nora reverts to first voice and her world ends. She must now separate from Nora’s husband, separate from Nora’s children. Untangle herself from the memories of a woman she has been impersonating.

Are you familiar with Cordelia, the youngest and most favored daughter in Shakespeare’s King Lear? Cordelia tries to share first voice with her father and gets banished for it⁠—but not from herself . . . only from what she could never be.

So, if the voice most of us share with the world is not the inner voice, the first voice, then all our adult relationships inevitably begin with deceit.

Even the ones that don’t end that way.

Anyway, we must get on. I have to stay focused. The notion of a third voice will come later. From this point, what time I have left will be spent cultivating what’s left of yours.

22.

Based on my current situation here in bed, I’ve learned that it’s best to sincerely pretend to not know who you are, nor where you are. Then anything you figure out must be true, as it’s not from assumption, but direct, immediate experience of the moment.