CL Pauwels at Large

Corinna Cook

By Corinna Cook:

My friend Bridget, at the end of the essay in which I call her Marion, ends up in a tree. Specifically up on some high, thin branch, like a bird. It has to do with the bent-over way she makes music and the frailty of her body, but it also has to do with the way my friendship with Bridget makes me feel like a dumb stump. Though of course I’m not a tree and Bridget isn’t a bird, and her name certainly isn’t Marion. True or false? True, of course. The essay isn’t devious, it’s just dreamy.

But I notice that when something is true, the specter of falsehood is always there at the table, bony mouth already opening, claiming some part of the conversation.

Do binaries always drag their other halves around like this? I don’t know, but I do find Niklaus Luhmann…