The Thingie

 Written today and first published here

The blue books were piled with methodical randomness under the trite ornament.  They were perfectly unread, perfectly staged, perfectly stylised props. The moment was perfect unto itself.

Perfect - until I showed them to the thingie.

The thingie was not a thing as such. 

Things existed.  Things could be measured, felt, seen, smelt (even to the point of gauging no smell at all), heard (even to the point of gauging no sound at all); things could be described, interpreted, evaluated.  Things possessed features, extent, personality (even to the point of gauging no personality), point (even to the point of gauging no point at all). A thing was a thing.  A thing of and in itself.  A thing had a first cause or creator, an ongoing preserver or potential destroyer. A thing could even have self-spontaneous existence or combustion. A thing you could hang a hat on.

Thingies, in comparison, were fictional things, things-in-disguise. A thingie was a drogulus, an unthing in thing’s hat. A thingie was, by power of suspension of disbelief, a reality in the shape of story, or a story in the shape of reality.  A thingie, by paradox, was also a logician’s box with make-believe inside that promises to be a thing if you open it or one with a thing inside that promises to be make-believe if you don’t open it.  A magicking of imagination towards the form of true perception. A prestidigitation of an unthingable thing making eyes at you from under its hat.

“What do you think of the blue books?” I asked, upon first becoming aware of the thingie’s presence.

For obvious reasons, I knew that the thingie saw me as the thing that had created it, so I was rather pleased to find it quite independently humouring me by promising to answer me at all: “Before I answer, do you really think I am capable of having views about anything?”

“Of course. You are a friend of mine of several years’ standing, are you not? Would you like a drink, by the way?”

“Yes, please.  I’ll have a scotch on the rocks.  But these blue books, I can’t see what is on the cover or if they have a cover at all.  Are they meant to be nothing but spine.  And the cone-thing on top – is that simply to pretend they have depth as well?”

“Not exactly a cone, more a blunt pyramid, I’d say.”

The thingie was taking me into areas which I had hoped to avoid.  I poured out its drink and handed it the glass with a great feeling of suspense to see whether it was able to drink it.  I did not like to stare so I continued the conversation as I returned the bottle to the drinks cabinet: “There is a cover bearing the silhouette of a statue on it amid a cloudy sky.”

“I only have your word for that, haven’t I?  Can I have some ice?”

I looked up with the growing realisation that I was suffering from the worst case of not-being-able-to-end-something that it was possible for any writer to suffer from.  A metafiction with no possible meaningful clincher to put it to bed.

Except I was still there.  And the thingie was still there.  It had the glass extended for the ice! If it had all been a story, I could have ended it there with a writerly whimper and an unscripted shrug.  You win some, you lose some.  But I could not end it at all. 

The story was real. I was real. The thingie was real. I and the thingie are still there. Count yourselves lucky because you can treat this whole thing as a proper story and simply leave with your own snigger and shrug.  Leave us there with the pile of blue books, leave us tussling for the truth of things, thinking-out things, thinging-out thoughts.

We two things or thingies in hats ... in aspic ... or iced in ice.

Praying to be stoned so as to blunt the edge of our existence.