The Autographing Message

[Wraxtiorre]

"Find the expressions that bring this book to an end, and seek those
expressions in your life." While my most basic intent in publishing
Mangled Doves was to just get "A Picture of Her Face" out there, and
make sure that the novella "This and That" predates The Narrative
Experiment (A work-in-progress, which is in its fourth childhood now),
and close the book on my past (figuratively speaking . . .okay,
literally, too) so that I can move on with future projects. To be
honest, I simply threw everything that I had ever written into this
manuscript and then removed those things which were unpublishable for
legal reasons, whether they would be Copyright or Trademark
violations, co-authoring conflicts, or Privacy Infringement (some
cases of which required only revision of details in the text). There
are sufficient other texts excluded from this publication which may be
published later in a second volume, but such an effort is too far in
the future to consider. It has been very difficult to find a unifying
message in this collection.

[Wraxtiorre]

Unifying message, huh? I was thumbing through the book today, trying
to make sense of the relationships between the writings, the meaning
behind the arrangement (and failing to do so). I purposely ensured
that the "Verses for the Vixen" section would contain nothing but
poetry, but the "Doggerel for Debbie" section contains poetry,
excerpts from the Letters to Debbie, and several short stories
unrelated to Debbie-as-recipient (I specify that as distinct from
"Debbie-as-audience," because I sent her copies of everything I was
writing at the time, but only the poetry and the excerpts from the
Letters were written to Debbie-as-audience). I kept asking myself,
why did I include "Hyperactive" and "Footprints on the Wall" in that
section, along with "Are We Human Yet?" and "A Modest Proposal"? But
then I noticed the closing lines of Lovenote 33: "These things that I
have said to you/Just can't be left unsaid." Was it the case that my
relationship with Debbie had gone wrong simply because I expressed
myself to her in ways that a guy shouldn't communicate with a
girlfriend? Let's examine the details (Try not to laugh aloud): "Int
Dat Cute" opens with a kitten-killing scene, and includes Smurficide.
"Are We Human Yet?" decries the pride of status-symbol-ownership, and
describes the gutting of a tiger. "A Modest Proposal" is a faithful
rewrite of Swift's essay of the same name, and yet applies the theory
to the entirety of humankind, as well as earth itself. "Imagination
I" uses coat-hanger abortions as a graphic example, and "Imagination
II" portrays a scene of murderous terrorism involving a pregnant
woman. "The Sleep-walking Episode" describes a grotesque kinky
event. These are not the kind of things a guy should tell a potential
girlfriend. But then I skipped forward to the Undelivered Letter to
the Vixen" in Appendix D, and realized that I had included it in this
collection precisely because it was my only effort to actually say to
her what I needed her to hear me say--even though she was already gone
by that point. So, the Vixen relationship failed for the exact
opposite reason that the Debbie relationship had failed. I was not
telling the Vixen the things that a potential girlfriend should hear.

But the Romantic woundedness described in the concluding "Wander-Sea"
text is only a superficial message in the book. At least I think
that's all it is.

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