Theories are by nature exclusionary. So are friendships.

Here are some words I use to explain my relationship with
Ozzy: twinship, symbiosis, tautology. Note the lovely
generality of those terms-- their aptitude at describing
relationships in biology, zoology, or linguistics. Our likeness
is complementary, and sometimes redundant. Perhaps, then,
a better descriptor is ambiguous.

The literary critic William Empson defined one kind of
ambiguity as an intense contradiction; like a grid-iron
pattern in architecture, in which prominance is given neither
to horizontals nor to verticals; or a check pattern, where
neither color is dominant: It is at once a structure and
an indecision, he wrote.

I defer to Ozzy, and Ozzy to me. We are invisible to
ourselves, and loud as thunderclaps to each other.

There is one stream of thought, shared between us: and
what does it matter who is the instrument of that thought?
Illumination occurs, as the anthropologist Claude Levi-
Strauss wrote, with either one of us in turn providing the
spark or tinder whose conjunction will shed light on both.

When we grow apart, and I'm afraid we will, we'll lose each
other first, and then ourselves. I cherish my solitude-- am
virtuosic, in fact, at being alone-- but only as a state of
exception.

I remain,

Your dedicated preservationist,

Cassidy

Index