2010-01-11 - 11:30 a.m.
Pressed to explain what the difference is
without using subtraction, I begin with between
two or more things, numbers or groups of familiar
physical objects: apples, coins, shapes or skin
from there
the comparison that comes. Separating like from like,
the denominators, elements already present among each of them
we come to the always excessive leftovers. Is this inevitable:
the measure and the count, the more or less he already
understands as better or worse, somehow sizing up
a palimpsest of the various ways he will choose to amass,
deprive someone else if necessary
He knows one
from the other as the want of some part greater or
gone, as in the game of peeling the long strip from two
oranges, eating the centre, resetting the peels
by each's side to see whose held up its shape
our means
to answer in the seams between the absent force
of the inner fruit and invisible gravity. A win
in terms of the greater of one kind of skin or short on another
depends on a math by melanin by which he will
learn that he, at some time, by strength large
and almost none at all, will be the difference,
that is, the one, if necessary, deprived.
