XXXIII. A Multiplicity Disguised.

Author’s Note,

Some pieces grow in the open. This series is where I let them, first drafts to later revisions, the slow layering of a piece finding itself. The version you see first is always the most current. Scroll down, and you might find earlier iterations.

This one began on New Year's Eve. I wrote the first lines in that strange hour between years, between selves. Then I closed the notebook and let it rest. I am only now catching up to it.

For what it's worth,

Charlene Iris

---

**The Nearly There** 

To finish oneself is to become tedious. And so I have practiced, with something like devotion, the art of beginning. How delicious, this terror of completion. How prudent, too, to resist the tidy fastening of a ribbon about the self, as though one were a parcel dispatched and done with. One imagines a label affixed, Contents Known , and then the slow suffocation that follows. To be entirely understood is to be gently, almost politely, set aside.

I have never wished to be set aside.

Beginning is a modest affair. It is the smallest administrative act: a date entered at the top of a blank page, the ink still slightly wet, faintly metallic in its smell. Nothing more decisive than that, and yet it trembles with implication. To begin is to admit that one is still in motion, still forming at the seams. In July, when the heat lay thick against the windows and pressed the hours into a sweltering suspension, I felt myself distinctly unsealed. The afternoons ripened towards nothing. A fly struck the window once and dropped to the sill. It lay on its back, legs working the air like a small, frantic clock. Then stopped.

The house, having relinquished its daytime proprieties, breathes differently at three in the morning. Insomnia is not suffering; it is attendance. One lies awake while the mind moves through its rooms by lantern-light. This version: incomplete. That conviction: insufficiently substantiated. Entire selves are assembled and again rearranged, as though shifting chairs before guests arrive, never certain who will come, or what arrangement will hold.

Even among cabbages, beneath fluorescent grocery store lights that seem to erase more than they reveal, the same slight estrangement persists. I stand before the leafy greens and sense that the person reaching for them is provisional, as though she has been assigned temporarily to the role and may be replaced without notice. Her hand hesitates over one cabbage, withdraws, selects another. Why that one? No reason sufficient to defend. The choice could not withstand cross-examination.

It would not surprise me if another were to step forward— identical in height and posture, continuing the selection while I am escorted elsewhere for clarification.

Between who I was and who I am choosing to become there is a seam so fine it passes for continuity. But linger, only a fraction, and it widens into a narrow corridor of light. In that corridor all possible figures stand assembled, patient but unhurried.

Each might step forward, or be leaned toward.

The choice is scarcely conscious; it feels less like decision than drift.

Or perhaps drift is only decision disavowed.

I am, and the phrase arrives not as conclusion but as pulse. I am, and again I am. The words do not close the matter; they keep it open. What I become in one moment loosens in the next. It is not instability, I think—though the charge could be made—but abundance complicated by procedure.

A multiplicity disguised in the polite singular of a name.

Perhaps it is not permitted to conclude oneself. Perhaps completion requires authorization from an office whose location is unknown and whose hours are irregular. The thought does not alarm me. There is something almost tender in the delay. Or else I have grown fond of postponement.

To finish oneself! What a dreary enterprise.

What would it mean, after all, to be finished?

No. I remain slightly ajar.

For I prefer the unfinished margin, the breath drawn before the period descends. I have been beginning all along, entering the date, lifting the lantern, standing beneath the lights, leaning toward one figure and then another.

I am and I am and I am: in this moment, and this one, and this one, and this. For now, it will have to suffice.

For what it’s worth,

-Charlene Iris

One thought at a time.

One truth at a time. 

Because some epiphanies stay with you.

---

**An Initial Draft** 

To finish oneself is to become tedious. And so I have practiced, with something like devotion, the art of beginning. How delicious, this terror of completion. How prudent, too, to resist the tidy fastening of a ribbon about the self, as though one were a parcel dispatched and done with. One imagines a label affixed, Contents Known , and then the slow suffocation that follows. To be entirely understood is to be gently, almost politely, set aside.

I have never wished to be set aside.

Beginning is a modest affair. It is the smallest administrative act: a date entered at the top of a blank page, the ink still slightly wet, faintly metallic in its smell. Nothing more decisive than that, and yet it trembles with implication. To begin is to admit that one is still in motion, still forming at the seams. In July, when the heat lay thick against the windows and pressed the hours into a sweltering suspension, I felt myself distinctly unsealed. The afternoons ripened towards nothing. A fly struck the window once and dropped to the sill.

The house, having relinquished its daytime proprieties, breathes differently at three in the morning. Insomnia is not suffering; it is attendance. One lies awake while the mind moves through its rooms by lantern-light. This version: incomplete. That conviction: insufficiently substantiated. Entire selves are assembled and again rearranged, as though shifting chairs before guests arrive, never certain who will come, or what arrangement will hold.

Even among cabbages, beneath fluorescent grocery store lights that seem to erase more than they reveal, the same slight estrangement persists. I stand before the leafy greens and sense that the person reaching for them is provisional, as though she has been assigned temporarily to the role and may be replaced without notice. Her hand hesitates over one cabbage, withdraws, selects another. Why that one? No reason sufficient to defend. The choice could not withstand cross-examination.

It would not surprise me if another were to step forward— identical in height and posture, and continue the selection while I am escorted elsewhere for clarification.

Between who I was and who I am choosing to become there is a seam so fine it passes for continuity. But linger, only a fraction, and it widens into a narrow corridor of light. In that corridor all possible figures stand assembled, patient but unhurried.

Each might step forward, or be leaned toward.

The choice is scarcely conscious; it feels less like decision than drift.

Or perhaps drift is only decision disavowed.

I am, and the phrase arrives not as conclusion but as pulse. I am, and again I am. The words do not close the matter; they keep it open. What I become in one moment loosens in the next. It is not instability, I think —though the charge could be made—but abundance complicated by procedure.

A multiplicity disguised in the polite singular of a name.

Perhaps it is not permitted to conclude oneself. Perhaps completion requires authorization from an office whose location is unknown and whose hours are irregular. The thought does not alarm me. There is something almost tender in the delay. Or else I have grown fond of postponement.

To finish oneself! What a dreary enterprise.

What would it mean, after all, to be finished?

No. I remain slightly ajar.

For I prefer the unfinished margin, the breath drawn before the period descends. I have been beginning all along, entering the date, lifting the lantern, standing beneath the lights, leaning toward one figure and then another.

I am and I am and I am in this moment, and this one, and this one, and this.For now, it will have to suffice.