The Other

This piece was published at sillymess on July 8, 2010.

The Other

It has been growing for some time. One might have begun to realize that it is a He.

It began as an idea, easily rejected. The nature of an other to existence, something outside of, not a part of, external, is non-existence. To define the essence of the other there needs to be the under girding of the common inherent properties of all things. Rejection in an idea is an acknowledgement of meaninglessness. Meaning can have no common property with the other. It may merely be illusion, but that illusion is grounded in its nature as predicate of reality. The other comes as an object of existence and not an other. Its essence, requiring existence, paradoxically presupposing its nature as an other to existence. Too big for itself, the logic collapses inward.

Yet, the other remained acknowledged as such. As such it grew. One began to see that the necessity for the other preceded the structural support of common inherent properties. The common inherent properties themselves, being a foundation built on nothing, were in want. Only the paradoxical suffices to erect the erroneous picture of actuality that is purported, by simple observation, to exist. The other, at once in and out of what is, finds itself suddenly, against all probability, inflating. When the essence of the other, being eliminated, abandons preeminence to its nature, then the other is suitable as foundation. From the very conflict of essence and nature emerges the inscrutable and ineffable, that which can cause movement without moving.

Finally, the other imbues from its disenfranchised environment, being entwined with, superceding even the common inherent properties. It lays claim to the paramount position among concepts. And meaning will bow and be defined in the light of the other. Essence will find its own essence to be the other. There will be no definition that does not presuppose that the other is implicated. Still, it grows. All that is real, all that is unreal, it encompasses. Its very nature demands that all the imperfections fall under one heading. Perfection becomes only its mark, the view from a distant vantage point. It speaks, and nothing does not come from its voice, and so it lays claim even to person -ality and -hood. One might have begun to realize it was a He.