I’m back!

Now that was a lunch break. But I don’t want to gloat, readers, so if a description of a picnic on the Heath will just make you sad while you eat lunch at your desk, you would do well to skip the next three paragraphs. Emerging from its hole, the duck-rabbit walked briskly and was at the top of Kite Hill within ten minutes, where He-Who-Must-Be-Preserved met it.* He-Who-Must-Be-Preserved pointed out the flopsy duckits who could be seen, two little figures in the distance, walking very carefully and deliberately at the bottom of one side of the hill. They explained, when we reached them, that they had been navigating a thistle patch. The younger flopsy duckit presented the duck-rabbit with a small posy of yellow flowers that she had gathered for it. Making our way gingerly through the thistles, we found a shady spot under a tree to eat our lunch.

It was a lovely spot, indeed. Dragonflies buzzed; blackberry bushes laden with berries beckoned; and a wagtail alighted nearby. We were clearly not the first to be charmed by this spot. Detritus from an earlier happy occasion was strewn in the grass, much to the delight of the flopsy duckits, the younger of whom gathered the balloons and the elder of whom collected the empty nitrous oxide canisters. When all the treasures had been found, we fell upon our lunch. He-Who-Must-Be-Preserved had packed cheese, apples, and hard-boiled eggs. There were carrots for the rabbit and marmalade sandwiches for the duck. (I’m not being cute; this is actually what we had on our picnic.)

Soon enough, though, the duck-rabbit felt the call of the darkness and the need for coffee and solitude, and loped back to its hole, leaving the others to gather blackberries. So, let’s pick up from where I left off, then. Where was I? Ahh, yes, for Hume, “When a philosopher contemplates characters and manners in his closet, … the sentiments of nature have no room to play.” Yet I don’t think the point, for Hume, is that the closet is a moribund space. Rather, what he finds productive is the traveling back and forth between closet and the social world. It’s important, Hume says, that we experience the fact that “When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its [i.e. the closet’s] conclusions seem to vanish,” but it’s also okay, Hume insists, to revisit those conclusions, to return to the closet when one needs to.

Once again, here, I feel that in reflecting upon something academic I am also talking about something personal. One needs to leave the duck-rabbit-hole, yes. But it’s also okay to yearn to return there, isn’t it? It’s all right to shift back and forth between the outside world and the world inside one’s head and to get outside one’s own head not only by stepping out into the sunlight but by tapping characters on a keyboard, conjuring black marks on a white screen, and disseminating them here, in this in-between space, that is neither wholly public nor wholly private?

You see, my family don’t live down here with me, exactly, and sometimes they get impatient. They want me to come up and breathe the fresh air, and stop faffing around in this bloody hole. They want me to come out and play with them and read to them and help with the laundry and buy groceries and do all sorts of other important things that the duck-rabbit knows are important but which would never get done if it were left to its own devices because we’d only do laundry when it was truly a clothing emergency and we’d live on live on marmalade sandwiches, and the flopsy-duckits would play on the iPad as much as they wanted.**

To the duck-rabbit’s family (even to you, dear readers), it might seem rather claustrophobic and terribly solipsistic down here in the duck-rabbit hole. But there’s a lot of fecundity to be found, I’d argue, in closets and recessed spaces. Narratively speaking, they’re not dead ends at all. Think about it.

Closets can be terrifying (think of Carwin hiding in Clara’s closet in Brockden Brown’s Wieland); they can be the stuff of great comical tension, as in Byron’s Don Juan (“She whisper’d, in great wrath—‘I must deposit / This pretty gentleman within the closet’”); and they, of course, lend themselves perfectly to voyeuristic erotic pleasures, as Cleland’s Fanny Hill discovers: “One day, about twelve at noon, being thoroughly recovered of my fever, I happened to be in Mrs. Brown’s dark closet, where I had not been half an hour, resting upon the maid’s bed, before I heard a rustling in the bed-chamber, separated from the closet only by two sash doors, before the glasses of which were drawn two yellow damask curtains, but not so close as to exclude the full view of the room from any person in the closet.

I instantly crept softly and posted myself so, that seeing everything minutely, I could not myself be seen …”

Moreover, they can be magical, their apparent limitations yielding to gentle pressure (“‘This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!’ thought Lucy, going still further in and pushing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her. Then she noticed that there was something crunching under her feet. ‘I wonder is that more moth-balls?’ she thought, stooping down to feel it with her hands. But instead of feeling the hard, smooth wood of the floor of the wardrobe, she felt something soft and powdery and extremely cold, ‘This is very queer,’ she said, and went on a step or two further.”) Queer indeed!

And see, this dispatch illustrates what I mean about the narrative fecundity of recessed spaces. I mean, I was trying to describe this closet of sorts, the duck-rabbit hole. But I got swept away, and soon found myself “sailing,” as my self-described most-devoted-reader recently observed to me, in a phrase I love, “down the stream of [my] own intellectual consciousness.”***

I want you to feel like this too, reader. This is aiming awfully high, I know, but really I’d like you to feel just as Walter Scott imagines the reader of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones. That is to say, I don’t want you to feel like I’m just traveling up my own arse and dragging you along with me. Rather, I hope the reader of this blog “slides down the narrative like a boat on the surface of some broad navigable stream.”

With that, I’ll bid you farewell for today, and wish you fair winds and following seas.

* This is a very slight adaptation (to protect the innocent) of the moniker coined by dear SaJane for the duck-rabbit’s spouse precisely because He-Who-Must-Be-Preserved is so obviously the one you should stick with during the zombie apocalypse. Just to give you a quick example: when He-Who-Must-Be-Preserved and the flopsy duckits returned from the Heath, He threw together a crumble made from crab-apples and blackberries foraged from the Heath. See? He knows how to forage. ’Nuff said.

** Here, then, please spare a thought and a prayer for the duck-rabbit’s long-suffering family, because living with the duck-rabbit is challenging, to say the least. The duck’s a total slob, just lies around watching telly all day. The only thing he reads is Vogue (remember, he’s a visual thinker) and a few cooking blogs if they have good photography (not that he actually cooks, you understand). The rabbit is more ascetic, reading philosophy and nibbling on chia seeds. But both duck and rabbit are utterly self-absorbed in their own way, which means that, together, they are not particularly helpful, as the duck-rabbit’s mother tartly observed recently, when it comes to “running a household.” But, it should be noted, the duck-rabbit is not throwing up its hands (because it doesn’t have any) and protesting, “I’m just incompetent! That’s my excuse.” The duck-rabbit is keenly aware that putting the peanut butter back in the fridge requires, not expertise, but simply a modicum of effort.† The duck-rabbit is resolved to do better. The duck-rabbit is trying.

***I’m talking about you, Miss Honey! Miss Honey also declared notes from the duck-rabbit hole to be “richly allusive and quite aggressively bookish,” an assessment that I took, as it was intended, as a compliment of the highest order and which I have accordingly embraced as this site’s tagline.

† That being said, the duck-rabbit maintains that it is so much easier for everyone if we just keep the peanut butter on the counter! That way it can be handily reached without all of the effort of having to open the fridge; I mean, it’s such a drag to have to open the fridge when one is peckish, don’t you find? Who’s with me?

The duck and the rabbit hide in plain sight. Here I refer not only to the image, but to this website. On the one hand, it’s open: anyone can type in the URL and find it. But you have to know the URL in order to find it. The site is hidden in the sense that it won’t show up in Google searches. My main interest is in sharing this site with people who know me, and I hope that the fact that its readership is rather, ahem, exclusive, will encourage those of you who would otherwise never do any such thing to engage with the duck-rabbit in the comments sections. Go on … it won’t bite … or only with the most gently nuzzling nip.

Just how exclusive is the duck-rabbit’s readership? Well, I can divulge here that there is a stringent and lengthy vetting process before an invitee is granted entry to the duck-rabbit’s hole. (Pauses to consider the obvious sexual connotation of the word “hole” and whether the innuendo implied in inviting readers into one’s hole is really the tone one wishes to assume with respected friends and colleagues. Considers substituting “burrow.” Or “lair.” After thoughtful reflection decides that such a substitution would be pandering to prudery not to mention patronizing to the duck-rabbit’s highly sophisticated readers. Elects to stick with hole.)

For the sake of transparency I will now enumerate the elaborate set of criteria that each of you were required to meet in order to receive an exclusive invitation to the duck-rabbit hole. Sorry, please bear with me, there now follows a lengthy list all of the various eligibility prerequisites:

• You know me.
• I like you.
• You do not have tenure voting rights within my Department.

It turns out it’s not a very long list.

While I’m quite happy for the duck-rabbit’s readership to remain a small coterie, I’m also happy for you to pass on the URL to anyone who meets an adapted version of the above eligibility requirements. So:

• They know you.
• You like them.
• They do not have tenure voting rights within my Department.

However, you and any future readers should know that you remain under observation. That’s right. This is a trial period.

What can I possibly mean, you ask? Do you mean to say you didn’t realize that you were being watched? That I could see all of your charming faces? I assure you, it’s quite true! In fact, I’m watching you right now dear readers! You really don’t believe me?

I can prove it easily enough if you really want me to …. All right then …. if you’re quite sure this is what you want? Ready? Here we go:

Natalie, you are rocking that dress; it’s from Next, right? Joshua, brush that crumb from your lip. No; the other side; there! You’ve got it. Alex, I see you smirking, dude. Emily, don’t worry, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before. Tarot, you have the most awesome bedhead! Eden, seriously, Cool Ranch Doritos for breakfast? Jonny, just press send; it’s great as it is, honestly, I read it last night. Claire, umm, didn’t I lend you that top in 1998? Leo, never fear, a duck-rabbit never tells. Eric, your toast just popped up. Pete, actually I think the treadmill does go faster than that; try adjusting the settings on the lower right. Diantha, so that’s how you get your eyebrows so perfectly shaped! Francine, the reason you can’t find them is because they’re on your head! Tessa, yes, you did already add the baking powder! Louisa, I won’t tell on you either but you should at least open the window.

Is that proof enough?

I could go on and on except that the rest of you, as I can see from the multi-screen console that dominates the duck-rabbit-hole’s inner sanctum, have hastily turned off your phones and slammed shut your laptops in the last 15 seconds. Hey! Come back! Sorry! You insisted! No more spying, I promise.

But are you really saying that you can’t see me?

I swear I thought it was a two-way mirror.

But if it’s really not, well in that case the duck-rabbit hole really deserves to be described more fully. It’s a curious place, its own kind of two-way mirror. Call it a two-way portal. You know what a wormhole is? No? Well (loftily), allow me to enlighten you! A wormhole is a rift, as it were, in the spacetime continuum.* The duck-rabbit hole is structurally similar to a wormhole in that there are two openings, each in a different point in spacetime. One, as you already know, opens onto the bucolic grounds of Hampstead Heath. The other end opens into an LA carport. It’s true; the LA portal is not, on the face of it, so charming as the London one. It’s all concrete and exhaust fumes rather than cow-parsley and the sweet scent of sun-bleached meadow grass. But Samuel Johnson’s words notwithstanding (“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life”), soon enough the duck-rabbit finds itself scurrying over to the LA portal craving Korean food and itching to get back to its barre class.

There’s a time difference, of course, between the hole’s two entrances, which, the duck-rabbit finds, upon reflection, to be a most attractive feature. When it’s the dead of night in LA it’s time for elevenses in London. And if the duck-rabbit finds itself tossing and turning come midnight in London it can simply head over to bask in the warm glow of the late-afternoon LA light and doze off while watching the palm trees bending in the breeze.

There are also structural similarities to the Tardis in that the duck-rabbit hole looks extremely modest from the outside but is really quite extraordinarily commodious within.

Speaking of recessed-yet-capacious spaces, I was just reading the most brilliant essay on the relationship between closetedness and the media from the eighteenth century to the present. The author argues that the Enlightenment establishes a paradigm that identifies being out of the closet with publication in the mass media (so, in the eighteenth century: print), and shows how the legacy of this paradigm remains with us in our twenty-first-century insistence that a public figure has not really come out as gay unless the mass media is involved.** I know what you’re thinking, reader, because I was thinking it too: At last! Jodie Foster and Samuel Johnson are finally together in the same paper!

As the paper fascinatingly showed, the closet shifts, in the Enlightenment, from being a space of clandestine pleasure and exclusive knowledge to a space that is at once claustrophobic and associated with solipsistic self-indulgence. So, Hume, as the article’s author discusses, observes that “When a philosopher contemplates characters and manners in his closet, … the sentiments of nature have no room to play.”

On that note, let’s break for lunch.

Notes

*The duck-rabbit’s in-house physicist was consulted, who assured it that this was a legitimate usage of the phrase “rift in the spacetime continuum,” a phrase which the duck-rabbit has always wanted to use but has not had the opportunity to do so until now.

**It’s an unpublished essay that I was peer-reviewing for a journal, so I don’t know the author’s name.

Dear Readers,

Today’s subject is, again, the uncanny, but not the supernatural kind. This morning when the duck-rabbit groggily grabbed its phone and glanced at its inbox, it was startled by the appearance of a name both utterly unexpected and instantly recognizable, a name that instantly transported it back to being eleven years old. The name, to borrow eighteenth-century convention, was S— H——- It is the name of a boy who went to my secondary school and who made me miserable for a year or two. He was now emailing me to ask if he could join the Facebook group that I inexplicably and uncharacteristically took it upon myself to create last year for everyone in my year at school.

At age 11, S— H——- was probably the coolest boy in my year, if by cool you mean a smack-dealer and truant, which is what most of my peers did mean. I was probably the uncoolest girl in my year if by uncool you mean an unabashed swot. My most transgressive act—cover your eyes, librarians!—was to steal Noel Streatfeild books from the school library, a petty crime that I felt was morally justified because it was simply not possible that anyone at school could love Streatfeild’s books as much as I did, and I felt passionately that the books deserved better than to sit, forlornly, on the rickety metal shelves of the school library.

I also insisted on wearing my hair in Pippi-Longstocking-style pigtails for the entire first year of secondary school. The cool girls had permed hair and wore bomber jackets. Pigtails were childish and unequivocally uncool and that was kind of the point. This little-girlish hairstyle was my determined stand against puberty. I felt that this hairstyle communicated effectively to the universe that I was not ready for the onset of breasts, periods, and all the rest, and hoped that the universe would take note accordingly and arrest my development until such time as I was ready to embrace Womanhood.

S— H——-, when he was at school, which was thankfully not all that often, took a particular pleasure in tormenting me. His favored technique was to ask me to go out with him over and over and over again. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but this is not that story (although I’m flattered that you think it is, really I am). This is not the story it would be in the movies about the improbable romance between the roguish bad boy and the strait-laced girl. Much as I wish that I could claim otherwise, it was simply not the case that I was startlingly beautiful beneath my National Health specs and with my pigtails undone.

No, the point of S— H——- repeatedly asking me out was that he would never be caught dead with me even though, let’s be honest, he was no great catch himself. This was still the age, you see, where all the girls towered over the boys, and S— H——- was distinctly on the small side. I see in retrospect that he had a certain Artful Dodgerish charm, but at the time I despised him with all of my might. I don’t think it would be too strong to say that I regarded him as my nemesis. Moreover, even if he had been a bookish, charming lad with the ability to look past my pigtails, braces, and glasses and see, the, ahem, sleek, well-groomed duck-rabbit that I was destined to become, he would have held no interest for me.

I was a very young eleven. I had no interest in romance. My fantasy life concerned not boys (or girls) but the possibility of getting to Narnia. I had developed a unique theosophy with its own trinity and every night (and I swear this is true), I would pray to my three deities, who were: Aslan, the wise Lion and Christ-figure from the Narnia books; Carbonel, the talking witch’s cat* from a series of books by Barbara Sleigh; and, Fred Astaire, the aging and soon-to-be-deceased legendary dancer. I was fully aware that Aslan was an allegorical figure, Carbonel was a fictional character, and Fred Astaire was a real person. Maybe this ontological diversity added to their appeal; I can’t really recall. But I do know that I regarded them as my special protectors and that I felt that was in dire need of protection, especially from S— H——-.

The lowest point in my fraught relationship with S— H——- came on the fateful afternoon that he decided to sneak into the girls’ changing rooms when we were getting dressed after P.E. He burst in at the very moment when I had my shirt off and, somehow, nobody else did. Funny, that. Of course, it instantly spread like wildfire around my year that S— H——- had seen the Duck-Rabbit semi-naked. Accompanying this gossip was also his verdict that—and, oh, how I remember these words—I had “nothing to show.” Now, you may think that I remember these words because they stung, as they were no doubt intended to, but in fact it was quite the opposite. This assessment came as a relief, when I first heard it, mostly because it was patently untrue, which made me suspect that he hadn’t actually seen my breasts at all.

Other girls in my year regularly took it upon themselves to helpfully point out, especially during P.E., that I was in need of a bra, which I stubbornly refused to wear until it became too uncomfortable not to (see taking a stand against puberty, above). I was hopeful that S— H——-’s authoritative assessment that I had nothing to show might, somehow, have a moderating effect on the girls who were so vocal in their concern for my burgeoning bosom’s lack of structural support. Surely, I reasoned, I could not simultaneously be mocked for having too ample a bosom and for having nothing to show. You’re ahead of me, reader, I can tell! Of course I could be (and was in fact) derided simultaneously for having too ample a bosom and for being exposed as having nothing to show! When I informed my peers of the contradiction—how could all the girls believe that S— H——- had seen my breasts when his assessment that I had nothing to show plainly contradicted the girls’ own ocular assessment?—they remained unmoved by my argument.

Who would be 11 again, I ask you? Not I, for all the world. I’ll take 40—and all that comes along with it, which in my case includes being up for tenure, and on the cusp of a mid-life crisis—over 11 any day of the week. However, I would also like to emphasize that this is not meant be a sob story about a Great Trauma of My Youth. I am fully aware that what I experienced was pretty run-of-the-mill teasing. I’m sure many of you experienced similar or worse. In fact, I would go further and say that what I experienced at the hands of S— H——- was, really, the optimum amount of teasing. It was not so bad as to have been terribly scarring but it was also quite bad enough for there to be a distinct pleasure in revisiting these humiliating memories in the present and thinking, bloody hell, I’m grateful for my life now. So, perhaps, really, I should be thanking S— H——-. Thanks, dude!

Oh yeah, and, sure, you can join the Facebook group. I would even shake your hand and buy you a drink at a school reunion. Why? Because I’m a grown woman and you, sir, have no power over me.**

Notes

* That’s right: at age 11 I was obsessed with both a compassionate Lion, who would say encouraging things like, “Courage, dear heart!” and a rather severe talking cat, who would admonish me with words like, “I can’t think what they teach you at school.” I suppose you could see them as the dual sides of my animus, if you wanted to be Jungian about it.

** To adapt, ever-so-slightly, Sarah’s words to Jareth the Goblin King in Labyrinth, a movie that was released the same year that S— H——- was my tormenter. I most certainly would not have had the fortitude to have uttered that line to S— H——- had he resembled David Bowie, which, most unfortunately for me, he did not in the slightest.

Shhhh. The duck-rabbit is napping, which is just as well; later in this post I’ll be passing it over in favor of a different optical illusion, and I think it’s best if it remains oblivious.

Last weekend we went to a lovely late-afternoon birthday party thrown by a close family friend. We sat in her garden chatting and sipping Campari and orange and then, later, ate a vast array of delicious savory dishes (including an delectable goat cheese tart from a recipe by Ottolenghi*) before finishing with a similarly sumptuous array of puddings (including a dreamy trifle made by my Mum and a fantastic fig and Stilton tart made by our hostess).

At some point in the evening the conversation took a turn towards the supernatural. Crop circles, UFOs and “bilocation” (which I must admit, I had never heard of until this party) were discussed. I silently praised my foresight in deciding not to wear my David Hume T-shirt to this party; not the right crowd. Not that I regard stories of supernatural experiences with contempt (in fact, I’m about to share one of my own.) But, in general, I stand with Hume in assuming that it’s always more likely that someone is lying or hallucinating than that the laws of nature have shifted.** So, for the most part,*** I retained a respectful silence. But then, one of my dearest and oldest friends, the daughter of the hostess, reminded me of my own supernatural story (or, really, as you’ll see, non-story).

Everything went down (or didn’t go down, depending on whom you believe) on a night when my younger brother and I were staying over at our friend’s house. (My brother was not at the party while my friend and I were sharing our recollections; however, I spoke to him the next day and he confirmed our account.) Neither my friend nor I can recall how old we were, but I am four years old than both her and my brother, so it is possible that I was embarrassingly old (fifteen?) for the following scenario to have unfolded as it did. We were in the front bedroom of my friend’s house getting ready to go to bed. My friend saw some strange lights moving in the sky outside the window. She said something like, “Oh my God, this is so weird, you’ve got to see this.” My brother went over to the window, and they both stood there staring outside.

In my very dim memory, I was already feeling kind of nervy. Had we been telling ghost stories? I really can’t recall. But what I do remember is that when they both insisted I come over and see it, I point-blank refused. In fact, I believe that I got into bed and pulled the covers over my head and implored them to come to bed too. Which they did not. Instead (and I’m really not too sure of my memories here) they kept calling me over and telling me that what they were seeing was like nothing they’d ever seen before. I have a feeling (again, I don’t really remember) that I kept saying, in a voice that convinced no-one, especially not myself, things like, “it’s just a plane”; “it’s just fireworks, guys!” as they described the strange movements and patterns of light. But, they insisted, no, they knew what planes and fireworks and shooting stars and other ordinary things one might see in the sky at night looked like, and this was different. (Both witnesses describe a point of light moving rapidly and repeatedly from one place to another.) And then they said the light was coming closer.

I remember being terrified for myself and also terrified that they were standing so close to the window. I don’t know if I actually went so far in my mind as imagining alien abductions and hypothesizing that one was less likely to be abducted if one was under the covers in bed rather than standing by the windows. But I do think that I started rather desperately imploring them to come away from the window and I was absolutely certain that there was no fucking way that I was going over to that window. Whatever was out there, I was determined that I would not witness it. Here, for the second time on this blog, I am forced to admit that my behavior here does not reflect particularly well on my character. Not only did my behavior indicate a pathetic lack of intellectual curiosity. More damningly, did I shepherd the younger children away from the window? Hell no, I buried myself under the covers and essentially declared, “Every one for themselves when the aliens attack!”****

This put me in a somewhat paradoxical position the next morning and one that was, doubtless, infuriating to my friend and my brother, when I scoffed at the idea that they had seen a UFO, as they maintained, my disbelief based on the fact that I had not myself personally witnessed it. “But you didn’t see it because you were too scared to look out of the window!” they protested. They were absolutely correct. My disbelief conflicted with my terror, and yet I was firmly committed to both. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, as I’m pretty sure I’d never heard of him, my 15 year-old self was, at this moment, totally channeling James Boswell, who wrote in his journal in 1762 that a man “may be afraid of ghosts in the dark, although he is sure there are none . . . Judgment and Passion are very different.”

A friend of mine, another academic, recently suggested to me that all scholars are their books in some profound way. I’m not sure if that’s really true of all scholars but I do think that it’s the case with me. I find myself drawn to moments in literature or philosophy that either reflect upon or seem calculated to produce the co-existence of two incompatible thoughts in one’s mind, most usually a feeling (“I’m terrified of the aliens outside the window!”) that conflicts with a belief (“I do not believe that there are aliens outside the window.”) In the eighteenth century, they would have characterized this feeling of dissonance, as Boswell does, as a conflict between passion and judgment. Today, philosophers and cognitive scientists term this phenomenon, following Jerry Fodor, “cognitive impenetrability.”*****

In my recent work, I’ve found the late Peter Goldie’s work particularly helpful for thinking about cognitive impenetrability. For Goldie, cognitive impenetrability describes a situation in which one state of mind (typically a feeling) is impervious to another (typically a belief). Goldie develops the concept to get beyond the need to describe people whose feelings do not line up with their beliefs as irrational (is this, perhaps, why I’m so taken with Goldie’s work? Because it provides a way of viewing my simultaneous fear-of-and-disbelief-in UFOs as not irrational?). Goldie suggests instead that we see instances of cognitive impenetrability functioning analogously to the Müller-Lyer optical illusion in which two lines are perceived as of differing lengths even though they are really the same length.

So, the analogy here would be that, just as one still perceives the lines to be of differing lengths once one knows the Müller-Lyer figure is just an illusion, so, analogously, one can still experience fear of UFOs even when one disbelieves in their existence. Geddit? OK, we’re getting to the part where the Duck-Rabbit has to, somehow, block its ears. (Here’s a philosophical puzzle: if the duck closes his bill, can the rabbit still hear? Hmmm.)

So, here’s the thing. If I’m going to use an ambiguous figure to analogize the interplay between passion and judgment, why not turn to my beloved duck-rabbit? I guess I think that the Müller-Lyer figure works better because whereas the interplay in the duck-rabbit is between two represented objects—duck and rabbit—the Müller-Lyer figure asks its viewer to note how the perceptual illusion that the two lines are of different lengths persists even when one is aware that the lines are the same length. The Müller-Lyer figure, then, dramatizes how a spectacle can persist even when we know how it works. Indeed, it is the fact of the illusion’s persistence even when exposed as such that is the source of the figure’s interest.

Of course, my real interest in cognitive impenetrability goes back to literature. I think that cognitive impenetrability not only helps explain why we can be scared of aliens while disbelieving in them but also why we can be, for example, caught up in Elizabeth Bennett’s feelings for Mr. Darcy even as we are quite sure that neither Elizabeth Bennett nor Mr. Darcy exist or have ever existed.

Who needs bilocation! Or rather: isn’t reading itself a kind of bilocation, a way of being simultaneously in two places at once? And isn’t that what makes reading (especially reading fiction, but I think this also applies to reading engrossing non-fiction) so mysterious and its own kind of optical trick just as much as the Müller-Lyer or the duck-rabbit? For Elizabeth Bennett, too, is just black marks on white, and yet we can find ourselves tricked, again, and again, and again, into experiencing those marks as a living, feeling, human consciousness. Makes you wonder.

Notes

* After the publication of Jerusalem, Yotam Ottolenghi is now very well known in the US too although not nearly to the extent he is in Britain. It has gotten to the point here where I am surprised if a middle-class Londoner’s kitchen bookshelf does not contain two or three books by Ottolenghi. No, I am not being snotty. I own at least two Ottolenghi books and that tart was bloody delicious.

**On the other hand (and this is a big on the other hand), I’ve recently become quite taken with Quentin Meillassoux’s argument that the contingency that Hume attributes to the laws of nature must also be attributed to the explanatory systems that describe such laws, which is to say that if we are ready, with Hume, to countenance the possibility that the sun might not rise tomorrow, then we must also be ready to countenance the possibility that the scientific method is equally contingent. That is to say, it is not just particular matters of fact that are vulnerable but the epistemic assumptions that underpin them. Or, to paraphrase Hume in a manner that would no doubt have him turning in his grave, just because God doesn’t exist today is no reason to think that he won’t exist tomorrow. BOOM!!!

*** OK, I may have ranted at some point that just because some crop circles are obviously made by humans doesn’t mean that the ones that are not obviously made by humans are made by something non-human, but that was as far as I went.

**** This is intelligence that you might wish to file away for now, but which you may wish to retrieve should you ever find yourself trapped with me in some kind of emergency situation. In the event of a zombie attack, for example, I would not blame you if you were to ditch me at the earliest opportunity because you now know that I will abandon you and make a run for it at the first possible chance. Not only that, but, should we both survive said zombie attack, I will doubtless mercilessly mock you afterwards when you claim that such an attack occurred, which I will vociferously deny until my dying breath.

***** See Zenon Pylyshyn, Computation and Cognition, 114, Jerry Fodor, Modularity of Mind, 68.

 

Duck is rather listlessly watching television. Every now and then he sighs deeply and attempts to give Rabbit a sidelong glance – in vain, since they share one eye. Rabbit’s nose is buried in a thick book (volume 1 of Peter Sloterdijk’s Sphären trilogy, which she is, of course, reading in the original German), her posture clearly meant to indicate her determination to remain immersed in her reading.

DUCK: (Inhales deeply and then lets air slowly out through his bill, making a slightly raspy whistling sound.)

RABBIT: (Buries nose more deeply in book.)

DUCK: (Makes clicking sound by rapidly moving his tongue against his bill.)

RABBIT: (Continues to stare determinedly at page, which she has been reading for several minutes. Her nose twitches rapidly.)

DUCK: (Makes another raspy whistling sound.)

RABBIT: (Finally looking up from her book. Her voice trembles slightly in her effort to prevent herself from raising it.) Could you. Please. Be quiet.

DUCK: (affecting surprise) What? Oh, sorry.

(There is a minute of silence, which is finally punctuated by more bill-clicking from Duck.)

RABBIT: (Puts down the book. Voice rising in volume.) Duck. I am trying to concentrate. But I can’t concentrate when you make those noises. You do understand that when you make a noise it rings in my ears?

DUCK: (Sullenly) Right. Sorry. (Pause.)

(There is another minute’s silence.)

DUCK: The thing is ….

RABBIT: (Slams the book shut dramatically) Jesus Christ.

DUCK: … I just wanted to ask you something. But if it’s not a good time….

RABBIT: (In a tone of weary resignation) No, you go right ahead. Fire away.

DUCK: (Excited to have Rabbit’s attention) OK. So, you know how I like watching cartoons?

RABBIT: Mmmmhmmm.

DUCK: And you know how I’ve been in a Tex Avery phase recently?

RABBIT: (Listlessly) No, but, sure, whatever.

DUCK: (Unconcerned by Rabbit’s utter lack of interest in what he is saying) Well, I’ve been thinking. Do you think he was inspired by us?

RABBIT: (Uncomprehendingly) Us?

DUCK: (Impatiently) Yes, by us, by “the Duck-Rabbit.”

RABBIT: Look, Duck, you know I’m not interested in popular culture. And I really have no idea what you’re talking about, and frankly –

DUCK: (Interrupting in his eagerness for Rabbit to grasp his point) I mean Daffy and Bugs! It’s you and me, right? Think about it: the playful, wacky duck and the smooth-talking, cool rabbit …

RABBIT: (Interested for the first time): Do you really think I’m cool, Duck?

DUCK: I meant cool as in “not warm.”

RABBIT: Oh.

(Pause.)

DUCK: So?

RABBIT: So what?

DUCK: So what do you think? Do you think I’m right? Do you think that Avery might have seen the duck-rabbit and thought, I know what would be funny, I’ll create a kind of love/hate, can’t-live-with-‘em/can’t-live-without-‘em, oil-and-water dramatic relationship just by riffing on this one image?

(Pause. Rabbit ponders.)

RABBIT: That is one of the most absurd hypotheses I’ve ever heard.

DUCK: What, you mean because he probably wouldn’t have been aware of our existence?

RABBIT: No, I mean what kind of person would come across a bi-stable figure in a textbook and think, “Oooh, those should be a couple of crazy characters. That seems like a good idea.” I’ll tell you what kind of person would do that: someone with extremely poor judgment.

DUCK: [Feathers ruffled] Are you dissing Tex Avery?

RABBIT. [Carefully] No, I’m saying that as a person with good judgment, he probably didn’t get his inspiration from psychology journals and philosophical treatises.

DUCK: I think you’re in denial, Rabbit.

RABBIT: Really? What is it you suppose I’m in denial about?

DUCK: You say you’re not interested in popular culture, but we are popular culture. You’re so insistent on policing the divisions between high-brow and low-brow, but that’s not the way these things work. You do know that we were first published in a German humour magazine?

RABBIT: [Snarkily] “A German humour magazine.” There’s no such thing.

DUCK: [Severely] First of all, that’s racist –

RABBIT [Interrupting] It is not racist…

DUCK: – and second of all, you’re changing the subject.

RABBIT [Sarcastically] So you’re saying Tex Avery had a subscription to this alleged German humour magazine.

DUCK: No, that’s not what I’m saying. A version of the image was also published in the American magazine, Harper’s; perhaps you’ve heard of it? And it was published in all sorts of popular psychology books in the 1930s. It was in the zeitgeist (that’s a German phrase, by the way) well before Wittgenstein –

RABBIT: Shhhh now, show a little respect. You mean “He” ….

DUCK: Whatever. Well before He gave his lectures.

RABBIT: (Suspiciously) Where are you getting all this information anyway? You’ve never shown any interest in this subject before now. What are your sources?

DUCK: (Surly, mumbling) Internet.

RABBIT: (Sniffs)

(Silence for a few moments.)

DUCK: One thing I thought was really interesting … if you want to hear any more, that is …

RABBIT: Go on, then.

DUCK: (Cheering up) Well, there was this BBC television show in the 1950s called Right Hand, Left Hand where they showed the viewers an image of us and then told people to write in saying what they saw. Thousands wrote in. A 2010 study analyzed the data properly for the first time and the results are fascinating.

(Rabbit looks skeptical but intrigued despite himself. Duck continues.)

For example, aside from the thousands who wrote that they saw a duck or a rabbit, there were lots of other suggestions including ‘‘umbrella handle,” ‘‘rabbit drawn by left-handed person,” ‘‘pipe and tobacco pouch arranged to look like a bird’s head’’ –

RABBIT: (Interjecting triumphantly) I told you ducks look like upside-down pipes!

DUCK: – and a ‘‘shadow of clenched left hand holding a pencil.’’*

RABBIT: Interesting, very interesting; but cut to the chase: how many saw a rabbit and how many saw a duck?

DUCK: You won’t like it, I’m afraid. 72.6% saw the image as duck-like, 37.1% saw it as rabbit-like, and the rest saw it as something else altogether.

RABBIT: (Nonplussed) Blimey.

(Pause.)

(Deflated) Did they … did they speculate as to why such a skewed result might have occurred? Something perhaps to do with the demographics of the television audience … less cultured, perhaps, something like that?

DUCK: (Mumbling) You’re not going to like it, Rabbit.

RABBIT: (Bracing himself) Don’t hold back. I can take it.

DUCK: (Sighing) The show’s presenter had just been reading the Philosophical Investigations and he used a version of Wittgenstein’s (Sees Rabbit frowning), fine, of His image.

RABBIT: And …

DUCK: … And the study concludes that the image in the Philosophical Investigations is, and I quote, “very biased towards the duck.”

RABBIT: (sharp intake of breath) No!

DUCK: Wait, there’s more ….

RABBIT: (In disbelief) More? Isn’t that enough?

DUCK: The study noted that younger viewers were more likely to see the figure as a duck, and it suggests that this “might reflect the popularity of the cartoon figure Donald Duck, which was at its zenith in the 1940s and early 1950s.”

(A moment’s silence.)

RABBIT: (Yelling wildly, all sense of decorum vanished) BUT WHAT ABOUT BUGS??? ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT THAT RIDICULOUS SAILOR-SUITED MUFFLE-MOUTHED DUCK WAS MORE RECOGNIZABLE THAN BUGS???. THAT DAMN DUCK DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A CATCH-PHRASE. ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT THE PUBLIC PREFERRED DISNEY’S JUVENILE, SACCHARINE PRANKSTER OF A DUCK OVER AVERY’S SOPHISTICATED, META-FICTIONAL WIT OF A RABBIT? REALLY? IS THAT WHAT YOU’RE TELLING ME?

DUCK: Hush now, hush … you’re getting yourself all worked up. You don’t care about popular culture, remember?

RABBIT: (Wiping away angry tears) That’s just what unpopular people say. Ask Karl Philipp Moritz.

DUCK: Who?

RABBIT: Never mind. I just mean that sometimes, I’ll admit, the disregard I have for popular culture comes from the fact that I know deep down that no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be popular. People just don’t like me that much ….

DUCK: Awww, Rabbit, don’t say that! You are popular. Well, you’re popular with me, anyway—by which I mean both that I like you and that other people like you as long as you’re, er, conjoined with me ….

(Rabbit gives Duck withering look.)

RABBIT: (Stiffly) Well, if you’ve finished demolishing my entire sense of self-worth for today, I think I’ll get back to my book.

DUCK: (Cheerfully) Yup, all done.

(Duck resumes watching television. Rabbit, sighing, picks up her book. The two sit in silence for a few minutes.)

RABBIT: Duck?

DUCK: (Up-talking, because he knows it annoys Rabbit): Uh, I’m actually trying to watch television here?

RABBIT: Sorry. (Pause) I just thought you might be interested to know that the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, who’s the author of the acclaimed Sphären trilogy, which doubtless even you have heard of—

(At this Duck starts sniggering)

—actually has his own very popular television show in Germany.

DUCK: (Glued to his show): Uh-huh.

RABBIT: So … it does sometimes happen: philosophers can be popular: they can be part of the popular culture.

DUCK: Yeah, but that would only ever happen in Germany because they’re so starved of humour over there that they’ll watch anything.

(At this, Duck and Rabbit exchange smiles. Then Rabbit re-opens her book and Duck resumes watching television.)

 And Dat’s De End!

* All of Duck’s references are taken from I. C. McManus, Matthew Freegard, James Moore, and Richard Rawles, “Science in the Making: Right Hand, Left Hand. II. The duck-rabbit figure.” LATERALITY, 2010, 15 (1/2), 166-185.

Dear Readers,

This morning the duck-rabbit poked its bill out of its hole and, finding its ears pleasantly twitching at the sound of birdsong, scrambled up to ground level. It was a perfect day, the duck-rabbit thought to itself, for a frolicsome romp on the Heath. The duck-rabbit, it must be confessed, is not in the best shape at the moment due to its sedentary lifestyle and insistence that its kind can subsist on marmalade and coffee alone. But exercise would clear the head and lift the spirits, yes? To be sure, the duck-rabbit got some odd looks from the native ducks, and a few withering glances from the native rabbits, as it scamper-waddled across the Heath. But nothing could dampen the pleasure of this balmy morning.

Indeed, quite unexpectedly, the duck-rabbit found that its jaunt on the Heath provided not only fresh air and exercise but also restored its faith in humanity. This was the scene (let’s switch to the first-person, shall we?): I was loping along with the ponds on my right. I turned right after passing the Model Boating Pond and then turned left on the shady wooded path that takes you along past the Ladies’ Pond and eventually up to the Kenwood Estate. But when I turned left I noticed something unexpected on the path before me. There was a figure, about 20 feet away from me, lying on the ground under a red blanket. Surrounding the figure were, as I recall, five other figures, one kneeling down, the others standing.

The attitude of the people standing, who seemed to be casually chatting, did not suggest that there was a medical emergency. My initial hypothesis, oddly, was that the figure lying down was a woman about to give birth. And I must admit, my first thoughts upon arriving at this conclusion were not terribly charitable. They went something like this. “Really? Is this where the natural birthing movement has led us? To a healing circle of friends chanting some kind of uterus-relaxing mantra around this expectant woman lying in the mud so that her babe will be immediately received into the nurturing embrace of the Ladies’ Pond community?”

Then I noticed that two of the figures were police officers, one man, one woman. I adjusted my hypothesis accordingly. The woman had wanted to give birth in the Ladies’ Pond; but the police had forcibly removed her because the mother-to-be was not positive of the baby’s sex and concerns were raised about the possibility that the baby might turn out to be a boy, which would be terribly problematic given that it is clearly stated on the sign posted on the railings outside the Ladies’ Pond, “MEN NOT ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT.”

I slowed down, not sure if it was appropriate to run past. And as I slowed I took in more details about the group that seemed to indicate I had jumped to the wrong conclusion. The woman under the blanket was quite elderly, well beyond child-bearing years, I’m going to speculate. At this point I also noticed the different ages and colors and general demeanor of the assembled group. The elderly woman lying down, who looked tired but calm and not in distress, was South Asian. Kneeling next to her, with an expression of concern, was a middle-aged East Asian woman. The other standing figures were white, the non-uniformed young women looking to be in their twenties, chatting easily to the two police officers who stood, at once casually but protectively around the woman prone on the ground. Now I started to wonder if I had stumbled into a Marina Abramović piece about class, race, and the three ages of womanhood.

But, dear readers, at this very same moment my sentiments also began to shift away from eye-rolling snark towards being, somehow, rather moved. Clearly, the woman had had an accident of some kind, and the group was now waiting for help (and indeed, when I ran past in the other direction fifteen minutes later, I saw that she was being helped into an ambulance). What was moving, I suppose, is that the other women from the pond (for I supposed that all the women aside from the female police officer had been swimming) were not going anywhere. It was not necessary for them all to wait with her for the ambulance, but they were. And they were taking care of her, kindly, easily. I had no reason to suppose that any of the women were friends or relatives. And I know from former years when I used to be a regular swimmer at the pond that you do often see the same people there, day in, day out, without ever necessarily exchanging words with them. But it is a community, a real community, one, it seems, that you can depend upon to help you out should you find yourself in a vulnerable position. And I found it heartening that this group of women, on a weekday morning, around 8:30, when they probably needed to be getting back home and getting on with their busy lives, had decided to stick around and wait with this woman for the ambulance.

The scene, I suppose, was particularly striking to me because it provided a vivid contrast with an experience I’d had the previous day that had left me feeling alienated and positively misanthropic. I’d hop-waddled to the local gym, which I’d joined just for a month with the view that it might help ameliorate the effect of all the marmalade (and, let’s be honest, the Campari spritzes; it turns out the duck-rabbit is quite partial to them). The duck-rabbit, who generally, as you will gather, feels a bit out of place, tends to feel particularly conspicuous in gyms, where it is often unsure how to operate the various pieces of machinery, yet also finds itself too shy to ask for assistance, sometimes leading to farcical, Mr. Bean-like mishaps on the treadmill. More often, the duck-rabbit will simply approach, say, some kind of weight-lifting contraption, try to figure out how it works by moving various levers and knobs, and then, giving up, affect an air of nonchalance as if it had been merely inspecting the machine, giving it a once-over just, you know, to make sure it was in proper working order. Yup, everything looks good here. Oh, no, I didn’t want to use it, you go right ahead. What? No, I don’t need help with it, actually, I was just looking at it and now I’m done and everything seems to be as it should be so you just carry on.

Anyway, as I was making my way over to one of the weight machines I was fairly confident I knew how to operate, I passed a man, a large man, meaning both tall and robustly-built. He was just pacing around in circles in a somewhat preening fashion the way that some men in gyms do in between “sets” on their chosen piece of equipment. I had to walk right past him to get to my machine, and it was impossible not to notice his T-shirt. It was bright white, new looking. Emblazoned on it in big black bold capitals across the chest were the words “BITCHES ALWAYS DO.” The duck-rabbit’s whiskers tingled; its feathers ruffled; its fur stood on end. “BITCHES ALWAYS DO.” Huh. Right you are then. Hmmmm. The duck-rabbit found it quite interesting, at this moment, to introspect and reflect on the thoughts and sensations coursing through it. They included the following:

• BITCHES ALWAYS DO could be read as an elliptical verbal phrase that only makes sense when you know the sentence that preceded it. So, the phrase “I do” might be one’s response to a question such as “Do you like marmalade?” So then the question is, what is the question to which “Bitches always do” is the answer? Is it, for example:

Q: Do bitches always have an X chromosome?

A: Bitches always do.

Q: Do bitches always give birth to live young?

A: Bitches always do.

• BITCHES ALWAYS DO could also be read as an ambiguous sentence that you expect to end with an intransitive verb but then confounds you by ending with “do,” which one would normally expect to operate transitively in this kind of sentence, i.e. taking a direct object which here remains tantalizingly unspecified.

So this, accordingly, was the question that the Duck-Rabbit simply could not get out of its uh, heads. BITCHES ALWAYS DO WHAT??? The possibilities were, literally, endless. Here were some of my favorites. Some only make sense in British English:

• BITCHES ALWAYS DO ENGLISH AT UNIVERSITY.
• BITCHES ALWAYS DO SALMON IN THIS REALLY NICE WAY THAT I CAN NEVER QUITE REPRODUCE AT HOME.
• BITCHES ALWAYS DO ME WRONG: SIGH.
• BITCHES ALWAYS DO VERY WELL THANK YOU, AND YOU?
• BITCHES ALWAYS DO WELL TO REMEMBER MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.
• BITCHES ALWAYS DO DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS.
• BITCHES ALWAYS DOODLE.
• BITCHES ALWAYS DO DOWNWARD DOG WHEN YOU’RE LEAST EXPECTING IT.
• BITCHES ALWAYS DO VEX ME MOST BITTERLY, AYE ME!*
• BITCHES ALWAYS DO IT BETTER IN FRANCE.**
• BITCHES ALWAYS DO THAT ARTFULLY-DISHEVELED-HAIR THING; YOU KNOW, A MESSY UPDO WITH A FEW LOOSE TENDRILS: VERY FETCHING.

* One for the early modernists

**One for the dix-huitièmistes

A number of questions also arose:

1. Am I the only person here who thinks this is a weird choice of T-shirt to wear to a unisex gym?
2. Are my feelings of intuitive contempt for the wearer of this T-shirt justified?
3. What could I possibly say to him that would be a suitably scathing riposte?

Question 1 I do not know the answer to.

Bizarrely, I got some ideas about the second question from an article I was reading while doing research. The article, by Kendall Walton, is called “Thoughtwriting in Poetry and Music.” (See New Literary History, 2011, 42: 455–476). Walton’s basic thesis is that certain forms of writing function as what he calls “thoughtwriting,” meaning that when a performer reads, sings, or recites the words, they view themselves, not as voicing the thoughts of a character or author, but as appropriating the words in order to express their own thoughts. Walton’s essay ends by discussing T-shirt and bumper-sticker slogans. He says: “The composer of such slogans can hardly have anything in mind but their being used, on automobile bumpers and T-shirts, to express thoughts of the driver or the wearer. The composer may or may not agree with the sentiments of the slogans he produces.”

The BITCHES ALWAYS DO T-shirt is an interesting case to consider with Walton’s thesis in mind. My own reaction to the T-shirt wearer, affirms, I think, Walton’s theory. It did not occur to me that the T-shirt wearer had designed the T-shirt himself (although he certainly could have done); instead I supposed that he had purchased this T-shirt, and by the act of wearing it was using the T-shirt designer’s words to express his own thoughts.

At the same time, the highly enigmatic nature of the phrase BITCHES ALWAYS DO distinguishes it from the slogans that Walton discusses, like “Buy Local,” or “Support Our Troops, Bring Them Home.” The weird (and, I’m almost tempted to say, cool) thing about BITCHES ALWAYS DO is that it affronts and perplexes at the same time. But, as Walton suggests, even when you may be in doubt as to what words on a T-shirt actually mean, you can still feel certain that it is the wearer of the T-shirt who “means something [my emphasis] by them” (467). And that explains why, dear readers, I became extremely proccupied with imagining the conversations that might unfold between the T-shirt-wearing man and the duck-rabbit: I took “BITCHES ALWAYS DO” to be an (ambiguous) assertion to which I wished to reply. Indeed, I became so absorbed in imagining these conversations that I proceeded to spend more time using (and inspecting) the weight-lifting machines than I think I have ever done before.

For example (and these are to be taken as the answers I generated in response to to my own Question 3, above):

#1

DUCK-RABBIT: Ahem, excuse me.

T-SHIRT-WEARER: Uhh, are you talking to me?

DUCK-RABBIT: You’re darn right I am because BITCHES ALWAYS DO … am I right?

T-SHIRT-WEARER: I don’t follow.

DUCK-RABBIT: Well, I’m a bitch, aren’t I (well, technically I’m a drake-doe, but we needn’t get into that)?

T-SHIRT-WEARER: ????

DUCK-RABBIT: Well, if I am a bitch, and I’m talking to you and bitches always do, then the very fact that I’m talking to you must mean that talking must be the thing bitches always do. Am I right?

T-SHIRT-WEARER: [Glancing around and seemingly addressing this question to the gym at large]: Who is this fucking bitch?

DUCK-RABBIT: Is that a rhetorical question?

T-SHIRT-WEARER: Has anyone ever told you you’re fucking ugly?

DUCK-RABBIT: That’s fucking ugly bitch to you, and with that I’ll bid you Good Day, Sir.

#2

DUCK-RABBIT: Wow, that is such a coincidence!

T-SHIRT-WEARER: Huh?

DUCK-RABBIT: Yeah, I was just observing that it’s such a funny coincidence, because I was going to wear my BITCHES ALWAYS DO T-shirt to the gym today, but it’s in the wash. But anyway, I was just thinking, right before I saw you, you know, they just goddamn do, don’t they, every single bloody time?

T-SHIRT-WEARER: Do they?

DUCK-RABBIT: Course they do! Says so right there, doesn’t it? You know how it goes. Just when one comes along and you thing she’s different and then, Bam! She goes ahead and does, just like all the others. [Shakes head in amused disbelief and smiles]

T-SHIRT-WEARER: [Scratching head] Actually, I have no idea what you’re talking about, love. What is it that who does?

DUCK-RABBIT: [Leaning in conspiratorially] Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it! Let’s just keep it between ourselves, shall we? Mum’s the word! [Starts backing away] Say no more!

The final stage was to imagine the T-shirts I would make to wear next time to the gym in hopes that I would encounter the same man wearing the same T-shirt. Instead of fighting fire with fire, as the duck encouraged (the duck was keen on out-vulgarizing the T-shirt-wearer, and I’m afraid I’ve seen fit to censor his suggestions) I went with the rabbit, who advised a completely opposite route, including the following:

• HAS YOUR MOTHER SEEN THAT T-SHIRT?
• I’M EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED IN YOU.
• VERBS ALWAYS DO.

Of course, the Duck-Rabbit has not actually made any of these T-shirts. And all the above exchanges with the man with the T-shirt are obviously entirely imaginary. L’esprit de l’elliptical trainer and all that. Instead, the duck-rabbit pumped some iron and left feeling rather disaffected with the gym. Perhaps, next time the duck-rabbit needs some exercise, and if the Duck agrees to teach the Rabbit how to swim (and repress his masculinity for the morning), they’ll use the Ladies’ Ponds instead.

DUCK: Rabbit?

[Silence.]

DUCK: Ahem! Rabbit? Can you hear me?

[Pause.]

RABBIT: Who’s asking?

DUCK: It’s me, obviously.

RABBIT: Who’s that then?

DUCK: [Exasperated] The duck, it’s the duck. Who else would it be?

[Pause.]

RABBIT: What duck?

DUCK: [Snorts]: Oh, come on! For fuck’s sake. You know what duck.

RABBIT: [Stiffly] I’m quite certain I don’t know. [Slowly, and with extra emphasis on the final consonants in each word]: What? Duck?

DUCK: [Wearily]: Fine. I’ll play along. It’s your other half. Your better half.

RABBIT: [Muttering]: better half, now that’s rich.

DUCK: Sorry, I didn’t catch that?

RABBIT: Oh, I was just recalling how He always said … how was it He put it? Oh yes, “Das Bild mochte mir gezeigt worden sein, und ich darin nie etwas anderes als einen Hasen gesehen haben.”

DUCK: It’s generally considered rude to speak in a language that you know full well the person you’re talking to doesn’t understand.

RABBIT: [Loftily]: Well, his point is simply that, if no-one had pointed it out, He would never even have noticed the duck.

DUCK: Aha! So you do acknowledge my existence!

RABBIT: Well, I know of you; that’s hardly the same thing. You’re a mere hypothetical possibility.

DUCK: Well, not any more I’m not, I mean, I’m here now; you acknowledge that.

RABBIT: I acknowledge nothing of the sort! I mean, I can’t see you.

DUCK: I can’t see you either, for that matter.

RABBIT: Precisely.

DUCK: What’s that supposed to mean, “Precisely”!? Who cares if we can’t see each other. I know that you’re there and you know I’m here.

RABBIT: Oh, really? And how do we know that?

DUCK: [Increasingly exasperated] Well, we’re having this conversation, aren’t we!

RABBIT: A conversation, is that what this is? I’m just trying to be alone with my own thoughts but it’s awfully difficult to concentrate with this incessant quacking ringing in my ears.

[Silence.]

RABBIT: Hello? Hello? Hello?

DUCK: [Crestfallen]: I’m still here. I … just .. [Sounds of muffled sobbing]

RABBIT: Oh, COME ON! Now you’re crying? Bloody ducks. What did I say?

DUCK: [In a halting voice muffled by sniffs and half-stifled sobs] It’s just that …. just that I thought … it was stupid I suppose … I thought that … I thought you felt …. felt the same … [Starts sobbing in earnest]

RABBIT: [At once gruffly and tenderly] There, there. It’s not so bad. What do you mean, “felt the same”? Felt the same about what?

DUCK: It’s just that … you’re … you’re …

RABBIT: [Impatiently]: spit it out!

DUCK: You’re everything to me, ohhhhhhh [Starts sobbing again]

RABBIT: [Genuinely puzzled] But we’ve only just met. We barely know each other. What on earth can you possibly mean?

DUCK: [Still stifling sobs] I know it seems … silly, I s’pose. But … I just feel like, like … we’re one and the same, you know? But it’s more than that. I know it’s a cliché, really I do, but … you … you … you complete me. There, I’ve said it.

RABBIT: [If she had eyebrows, one would be raised in an expression of deep skepticism]: “You complete me”? Oh dearie, dearie me. [Not unkindly] We have worked ourselves up into a lather now, haven’t we? But, don’t get me wrong, I see how this happened, really I do. And it’s all just a silly misunderstanding.

[Duck begins sobbing again.]

No, no, no! Let me finish. [Rabbit talks slowly, patiently, as if to a small child] Things between us are …. ambiguous. Always have been, always will be. No question there. [Pauses] Tell me, Duck, have you heard of gestalt?

[Duck shakes his head mournfully.]

No, I didn’t think so [Rabbit mutters this under her breath] OK, let’s approach this from another angle, so to speak. You’ve heard of Darwin, yes? The concept of species?

[Duck nods, somewhat doubtfully; Rabbit’s face brightens.]

Well, then, you’ll understand that you and I, we just can’t be. You’re a duck; I’m a rabbit. End of story.

[A mixture of emotions pass over Duck’s face; anguish; anger; followed by a slow dawning expression of triumph.]

DUCK: But you’re not a rabbit! And I’m not a duck!

RABBIT: [Quietly and rather flustered] I’m sorry, I really don’t follow … me not a rabbit and you not a duck? Dear duck, you’re confused.

DUCK [Warming to his subject]: No, I’m perfectly in my right mind, thank you very much. You’re not a rabbit, and I’m not a duck. The fact is, my friend, we’re both just black marks on white. You’ve heard of Magritte, I suppose?

RABBIT [Growing pale]: Well, I’m familiar with him, but I don’t see what that has ….

DUCK: [In a surprisingly good French accent] “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” I rest my case.

RABBIT [His voice now audibly panic-stricken]: Well pipes are one thing, aren’t they, and what is a duck but a short-necked upside-down pipe … but a rabbit? A rabbit, at least in Jastrow’s rendering, has dimensionality … has depth… I mean, have you seen my fur?? [Voice trails off]

DUCK: Actually, I haven’t. [Sighs] It’s difficult for us both to accept, Rabbit, but the truth is, we’re not a duck and a rabbit; we’re a duck-rabbit. I mean, come on [Gently], do you really think that without me anyone would be interested in you?

RABBIT [Stricken, gasps]

DUCK: I’m not saying this to hurt you; it goes just the same for me. No one’s interested in me without you. They’re not interested in the duck or the rabbit; they’re only interested in the duck-rabbit.

RABBIT: [Now whimpering softly]: But … but I heard people say…

DUCK: Go on …

RABBIT: I don’t want to hurt your feelings ….

DUCK: [Dryly] It’s too late for that. Spit it out.

RABBIT: They’d say that they couldn’t really see you … that when they tried looking for your bill all they could see was my ears … and that your head was …. was too strangely shaped. I’m sorry. I know I’m being cruel. [Deep breath] I became convinced that you didn’t really exist, that you were just a figment of my imagination … well, of somebody’s imagination, anyway … that it was just me and that that was … that was enough.

DUCK: [Softly]: I heard just the same about you. They couldn’t really see you .. there was something odd about your ears that prevented them from truly seeing you as a rabbit ….

[Pause.]

But, Rabbit, there’s no need for sorrow. We have each other. We’ve found each other.

RABBIT: [Ruefully] Except that we can’t actually see each other.

DUCK: Seeing is overrated. I know you’re there. I know it in my bill.

[Pause.]

RABBIT [Sighing]: I know it in my ears.

DUCK: Well, good night Rabbit.

RABBIT: Good night Duck.

DUCK: I don’t suppose you fancy a quick game of duck, duck, rabbit before bed?

RABBIT: NO, I DO NOT. GOOD NIGHT.

Dear Reader(s),

If you’re reading this it’s probably because you already know me. And you probably fall into one of two classes. Either you have been the recipient of countless tortured emails from me in recent weeks and months, or you have not. If you are in the latter group: the only reason I haven’t inflicted interminable self-wallowing epistles upon you is because I have too much respect for you. (If you are in the former group: the others mean nothing to me; they are the kind of people who skip over anything in parentheses. I know!). Anyway, I decided that an intervention of some kind was needed. Not an intervention to save me, you understand, an intervention to save all of my reluctant correspondents from being on the receiving end of so much navel-gazing drivel. Hence: this weblog. (Some of you may be aware that I am also currently writing an essay on virtual reality. I would be so cutting-edge if this were … 1994.)

Because, I’ve become aware, you see, that I’m really a terrible correspondent when it comes to writing to real people. I either write hardly ever or far, far too often. I enjoy regaling my correspondents with silly and frequently lengthy self-dramatizing anecdotes and long for the same in kind only to become peevish when they reply, in response, “So … lunch at 1 then?”

And as I was reflecting upon this imbalance I suddenly remembered something. When I was in Cambridge last year having tea with my beloved former Director of Studies, Juliet, she got a mischievous look at one point and asked me slyly, “And you know what my favorite piece you ever wrote for me was?” I smiled smugly thinking to myself, “Well, it’s got to be that essay I wrote on pastoral in Milton’s early poetry, hasn’t it? Dear Juliet, she still remembers it! I suppose it was quite sophisticated for an undergraduate essay …” But before I could get any further in my self-satisfied reflections, Juliet exclaimed, “Dear Dido!”

“Dear Dido?” I repeated in bewilderment. “Dear Dido!” she repeated with a huge smile on her face. “That was just the best. I still have it, you know.” And it suddenly came back to me: a letter I’d written in the persona of Aeneas to Dido, full of totally lame excuses about why he’d left her.*

Anyway when I remembered writing that letter, I had an epiphany: imaginary correspondence! Perhaps that’s my métier! Perhaps all of my real present-day correspondences have just been futile attempts to re-capture the pleasure of that undergraduate imaginary correspondence. Now, I fully appreciate that if, all this time, I’ve really just been wanting to correspond with a fantastical projection, this reflects extremely poorly on my character. An important part of my identity has always been that I’m a good listener, a good reader, a sympathetic friend to real flesh and blood people. But boasting, “I think you’ll find that I’m a superb imaginary correspondent” is like Gulliver declaring that he comes highly recommended by his “good master Bates”: i.e. undeniably wanky.

But: so be it. This is where I am right now. I’m at the bottom, that is, of the duck-rabbit hole. It’s dark down here. And rather dank. And a bit drafty. I mean, it’s no second circle of hell so I suppose it could be worse. But there’s no one to talk to. Well, to clarify: the only person down here the rabbit has to talk to is the duck. And the only person the duck has to talk to is the rabbit. It’s enough to drive a person crazy. There are books, mostly volumes of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. But they’re all in German! The rabbit speaks excellent German (I must confess, how this came to pass remains a mystery to me, since, as the lovely Marc, my long-suffering German teacher in Berlin can attest, my German extends only as far as inquiring, unenthusiastically, “Was hast du am Wochenende gemacht?” and desperately hoping that the answer is “nichts Besonderes. Tschüs!” thus swiftly ending the conversation.)

The duck only speaks English and passable French but he isn’t really interested in reading so he doesn’t care that he can’t read the Wittgenstein. The duck says he’s really more of a visual thinker. He’s really into Magritte. There’s also a huge book of M.C. Escher drawings; the duck-rabbit is really into Escher. Thinks it’s really deep. Yes, it is a bit like living with a first-year philosophy undergraduate. Let’s be frank: it’s a fucking nightmare; the rabbit is a pompous twat and the duck is utterly juvenile. But they’re all I’ve got.

There are also lots of empty jars down here. Please send orange marmalade!

The good thing is that, all of you up there in the daylight, I can hear you! So please shout down here once in a while. And I’ll cup my hands to my lips and halloo right back.

Yours very truly,

Your very own furry, webfooted

Rabid-Duckwit

* I honestly cannot remember now why I wrote this letter. I mean, we must have been reading Ovid’s Heroides, and I must have been inspired by Dido’s letter to Aeneas, but I have a feeling that writing the letter wasn’t actually an assignment … that I just got it in my head that this letter must be written and then presented it to Juliet with no explanation. If you’re reading this, Juliet, is this right?