I cannot say what makes a mystery...
or doesn't...
except to say: 'formulas' are not 'mysteries'.
The Not-Mystery of the Basic B$tch
There are no mysteries. You know: unknowns. There is only (a) what's known, hidden from you, (b) by a stranger or a someone not a stranger (c) or a you, yourself.
*
So there's a woman knocking at the door. Why? Why not no one? Why is there a stranger at the door?
But I don't ask the someone at the door: why. Because I know something the stranger doesn't: she won't tell me the truth. Not because the truth is unknown. Not because the truth is a 'mystery'.
Because the someone knows. Why she is knocking at my door.
I don't ask because the truth is her secret. Withheld from me to keep me in the dark. As if darkness is hers to impose.
*
So there's a man who sits accused in a courtroom. Why? What's happened? What compels a man to be so publicly addressed?
Who's to say? The accused? I don't ask the accused: why. Because I know what everybody knows: the accused won't tell anybody the truth. Not because the truth is unknown. Not because the truth is a 'mystery'.
Because what's happened, happens: not by everybody squeezing their eyes shut; not by everybody tying their hands to their sides and fixing their feet to the ground; not by everybody zipping their lips with tossed invisible keys.
Because see-nothings and do-nothings and speak-nothings do not exist except insofar as fictions that secret the truth behind nothings.
*
So there's someone who starts 'it'. Why? Why not no one? Who, after all, starts a war?
It's unjust and terrible and of all wretched human acts, the worst. Every. Single. Time. Still: why? why? why? we ask.
Not because the truth is unknown. Not because the truth is a 'mystery'. Because life is fragile and cheap. As for sacred:
What's sacred about molecules? Their mere existence? Still: we profess 'our truths' like knives of blamelessness at each other's throats. As if grace forgives us... our dishonesties.
*
There are no mysteries. You know: unknowns. There is only (a) what's known, hidden from us, (b) by a stranger or a someone not a stranger (c) or an us, ourselves.
I am, on the one hand,
disappointed that The Not-Mystery of the Basic B$tch is not a familiar 'story', much less a 'formula' 'mystery'.
But I am, on the other,
not confounded.
By the time its audience appreciates the thrill of its puzzle: not only is it the case that a familiar 'story' was never a 'mystery', not really, afterwards, it will never 'again', dumbfound its audience.
*
Such that what we enjoy
is not-mysteries after all.
*
But life, unlike a genre or procedural or category, doesn't present not-mysteries as 'formulas'. A woman. A man. A someone. A knock. A trial. A war. The telling that entertains
is make believe.
In reality, to know what's known, hidden from us, by a stranger or a someone not a stranger or an us, ourselves -
is our not-mystery to solve.
*
The not-mystery of who to trust. With ourselves. With our honesty. With being kind.
The not-mystery of who to vote for. Because lives worth living are not created by human beings who don't give a f*ck, sh!t, or d@mn.
The not-mystery of who to stand with. As if standing 'as one with our own' without a moral compass... is who we are and what we do.
Because the 'formula' for 'basic' is, in the end, unoriginal and...
unexceptional.
M
*
Notes
(i) The title of this post is The Mystery of the Basic B$tch. However, I appreciate that such title is, in a sense, misleading. With that in mind, the published title of this post is The Not-Mystery of the Basic B$tch.
Note that my title references Lisa Jewell's None of This Is True: A Novel for reasons that are plain and self-evident.
(ii) The not-mystery of the 'basic b$tch' or 'normative @ssholery' isn't why.
Id est: (a) ignorance, delusion, and rejection doesn't make conventional antipathy, hostility, and wrongdoing not exist; (b) blaming everything and everyone but oneself and one's own doesn't make oneself and one's own right and everything and everyone else objectionable; (c) deciding final solutions are the only way to act doesn't make such decisions the only legitimate means to acceptable ends, etc.
Which is to say, the not-mystery of the 'basic s$gma' or 'prescriptive @ssholery' is what. we. make. so.
(iii) My 'truth to power'
to the powerful who are teeming masses is: there are truths to be told; to the powerful who are inheritors of aristocracy, who govern institutions and legacies is: there are truths to be told; to the powerful who are extremists, who employ cruelty and malice is: there are truths to be told
because power is not above truth.
My 'truth to power'
opposes the reasoning that there exists an inherent 'right' to power through (a) a so-called 'divine right' that abuses the conditions and exploits the loopholes of representative government, (b) corruption and contempt of truth, and/or (c) the 'will' of make believe, whether such make believe is a so-called 'privilege' of (i) 'ideology' or (ii) 'faith' or (iii) so-called 'right' to lie with bona fide 'impunity'.
(iv) There is no 'mystery' to a future that furthers goodness; there is plainly:
action that advances such future or action that ensures such future is dead-on-arrival or inaction that robs the future of its potential to be more than
basic.
M
