TGU: This is still too vaguely expressed. Get your thoughts into gear, as they say. Or rather, apply yourself, don’t just drift.
F: Once upon a time, this work consisted of my willingness to act as scribe, trusting that I was not making it all up behind my own back (a suspicion I have never lost, though that too is too simply put). Then it became a dialog in which my part was as focused as expositor as it was as receptor. Then Rita began encouraging me to express understandings in my own words, so that my part in the enterprise came to be part radio receiver, part translator, part essayist. And now you seem to want me to use an insight conveyed to me as a point of view, and build on that.
From one point of view, what you just said is entirely mistaken. That isn’t what happened at all. But from your point of view, the progression seems natural. Well, it is part of your work to show that this is how you experienced it, and our work to show what it really was. From the beginning, you have been interested in information and we have been interested in process.
Yes, I guess I do know that, though it took me a while to catch on.
Well, where you are now is the skeleton behind the flesh of human activity.
—
This is an excerpt from “Only Somewhat Real,” not yet published.