In a small cottage in a small village in England, Nell sat and looked out the window. She disrupted her own stupor by going to the kitchen and making a cup of tea. She looked out of each window she passed and gave pause at each of them. Each revealed mesmerising details about the world at insect level or the scattering of light or rain drops making canals in the mud.

She reminisced how quickly she had lost Patricia. Everything about it reminded Nell of the two incidents in life where she had been close to death. A dog that had suddenly died long before she had expected it to and her mother’s father who seemed to slip from life itself right when he had a solid grip on everything you need to do when you grow older.

She remembered all the sound and fury in the unbelievable death night, and she remember the hideous silence afterwards devoid of solace, impregnated with prospects of agonising realisations.

One of the last times she spoken with Patricia, she had felt sure their brittle connection would survive and grow strong. The young girl was at that event more exposed to her own peculiar damnation than ever before. She was studying as an exchange student at a Chinese university, but she felt rejected and out of place. She felt stupid amongst bright and younger kids with more promise.

What Nell knew but couldn’t tell was how much she admired Patricia for being innervated with a sensitive nature that transcended her personality. Patricia was a melody, a cry of desperation which when mixed with an ability to voice her pain became volatile.

Nell had in Patricia inspired a desire to reach up from the humdrum of her 26-year life and take courses in philosophy.

On hearing this, Nell knew she had forfeited a rare chance to unite with her own deepest yearning. She knew that starting as a student meant commencing a hectic life with little room for personal feelings, and she could imagine what it felt like being 26 in a room full of juveniles. Initially and for a while Nell thought Patricias trouble fitting in was her lucky break as Patricia called her and asking her to relive their creative and beautiful discourse.

Nobody could take that away, not their magical connection. When they gave way to talking in the middle of the night, it felt like they could talk forever. They brought a magic out in each other that rose over them as a radiant pale moon imbuing a visual timbre on every straw and every branch in the garden of human knowledge.

Together they reached depths that were beyond their limits on their own.

Depths that Nell very well knew were Patricia’s own personal hell.

What better thing to wish for Patricia than to escape that hell. Nell knew she would lose her when she at long last managed to settle in with her fellow students. And she would eventually. She would escape her hell and Nell would have lost a last chance at redemption. Each night Patricia didn’t call was a night exposed to the agonising truth that Patricia was growing distant from Nell’s fantasy of a warm embrace.

If she really loved Patricia, and god she loved her, she would not try to call her or resume dialogue.

The days between each call rapidly grew longer. Soon she received only text messages relaying ever more remote details. “Dear Nell, I switched from philosophy to sociology. I believe it suits me better. Wish me luck! Love you.”

Those last words were all Nell had ever dreamed of hearing, and of course, when they finally arrived, they held no meaning. Patricia was safe now. Safe studying sociology as a sociological insect.

Then finally Nell had admitted defeat and gone home to England.

Final chapters

She walked outside and stood in the rain. It was cold now. Give it a handful of years further, and she would have to be careful not to catch pneumonia.

Where was the angel of clarity? The distant shout in the night that yelled out and warned about an approaching pyroclastic cloud?

“Where are you my God”, she almost whispered there in the encroaching night. The rain soaked her dress and drenched her body and for incomprehensible reasons she felt like hands were touching her. “Sweet night, come and rape me”, she thought. No, she spoke it. “Victimise me as I dream of victimising others. Do unto me as I dream of doing onto others”. She could hear her own half-whispering, half-loud voice.

The rain stopped as a final act of cruelty by providence.

She went inside and took a shower and put on clean clothes. All for nothing, as she sensibly went to bed.

And she was almost, just barely alone. The only witness to the breathing outside her window was the branches scraping against the glass.

She woke up at three in the morning. Wide awake she stared into the ceiling and thought about sociology.

“What a pragmatic turn you took, didn’t you, dear Patricia. Why? Are you enjoying your new self?”

Her laptop had actual dust on the keys that she could blow off.

It felt futile, and the act did not bring about the expected sleepiness.

Hence she was awake when the answer arrived soon thereafter - China was after all ahead of England on the map of timezones. She stayed in bed and read it on the phone. Months ago she would have gotten up and religiously prepared for reading the message like she was in presence with the divine.

Remnants of lingering pain resurfaced immediately. Nell didn’t feel betrayed as she was unable to feel any animosity towards Patricia. If not for anything else, then for the sheer memory of what they had.

Instead she peered fearlessly into the pitch black night and spoke firmly: “Tell me your name angel. I have wrestled with you before and I will again. Now tell me your name.”

Nell was next on the list of people to become unhinged. Pain leaves nothing standing in its wake.

She flung the blanket away and got up. That book… pulling out boxes and crates and going through shelves until she found The Social Construction of Reality - 1966. She could hardly call that one modern. Nell sneered at the cover of the book. Here was the culprit that had stolen her happiness. How difficult could it be?

She looked at the clock.

5 a.m. and she needed sleep before pretending to be able to stand on her own feet tomorrow and drive safely to her part time job. In due time she knew she was going to be fired. She was using up goodwill fast.

At least she got the first half of the book covered in one night. It trailed off into a wilderness of symbolic order discussions which Nell felt was out of place.

She had to email her notes to Patricia even though the roles had clearly been reversed.

Now she could sleep.

New chapters

No new email ticked in from Patricia the next day. That was easy to interpret: Nell was now a point on a list, something that needed to be dealt with, but in prioritised order.

She read the chapters again and the rest of part 2. This was not philosophy, that much was clear. Pragmatic indeed. And if she tried to say anything not in the book’s favour, she was in trouble.

When she woke up the following day, she saw the email. It was sent sometime around 9 p.m. in Patricia’s timezone. Most likely Patricia had found time to answer sometime after dinner.

Did it make sense?

Nell leaned back and pondered her next move. The girl had not dismissed her outright. She gave a routine answer, but that beat outright unfriendliness towards a stalker anytime. For a very short moment Nell’s heart sent an inaudible message across the globe to all men secretly and unrequited in love via a hitherto unknown sub frequency mind channel. The message was received but remained below the level of consciousness.

Were they wrong, those two, Berger and Luckmann, gentlemen sociologists? Did they not after all view humanity from exactly the lofty vantage point required to see through all our philosophising as nothing but legitimation of society as it had evolved?

Did she even disagree? Had she not lectured at some point to Patricia how rationality could theoretically be nothing but varnish shielding the real motives?

No, she hadn’t. She had never denied the existence of both lacquer and underlying wood.

She sent the email.

Nothing next morning.

A debate between a single woman and academia

The morning after an email arrived.

Nell had not foreseen the possibility of arguing with the entire campus. Patricia was entrenched and in a good position to hold her ground.

And Nell was alone against the world, fighting as a duty bound foot soldier obeying an invisible colonel in the shadows commanding her to relinquish control and thrust herself into the raging battle for love.

And after all, Nell was alone and the books were piling up. She could hold her position against assault for the foreseeable future.

•P•A•R•A•D•O•X•