Empty Attachment by Ihab Hassan

It started as a pun, ended in bewilderment, worse, images of a life I never lived, songlines leading nowhere. And why would bewilderment stop here? Why wouldn’t it stretch to query our comings and goings and all? The mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the old mystics called it. All the super strings, wormholes, quantum foam of the universe.

There is nothing mystical about a slipped synapsis, though, a finger fluttering over a keyboard, a pun or long-echoing song. I simply forgot to attach a file to X, and he messaged back: “Empty Attachment.” That was all. Must his words become the indelible stigma of my purloined life? There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.... No, that’s not X, it’s Maeve, Maeve singing in the evening, humming through the shadowy radiance of the day. more....