How It Begins… [FICTOID]

“Whatcha reading?”

“Kant.”

“You can’t read?”

“Immanuel kant.”

“Wasn’t he a real pissant who was very rarely stable?”

“Swear to God, you launch into a Monty Python routine and I will knock your teeth out with this chair.”

“Sheesh!  Sorry.  So…what exactly are you reading?”

“A letter by Kant.”

“What leter?”

“The letter Z.”

“Okay, now you’re shining me on.”

“No, I’m not.  Shortly before he died Immanuel Kant started a series of essays on the letters of the alphabet.  Z was his first essay, the only one he wrote before he died.”

“How did he die?”

“How does anybody die?  His heart stopped beating.”

‘No, I mean did he go quietly in his sleep, was he gunned down raiding a crackhouse, did his eyes roll back up in his head and he made a gurgling sound?”

“God, you are a sick, twisted fuck.”

“That’s what my three ex-wives tell me.”

“Kant wrote on all the properties found in words beginning with the letter Z.”

“I bet it wasn’t E-Z.”

“I’ll ignore that and spare your molars.  Kant’s point was they all share an essential ‘Z’-ness that unifies them.

“Case in point:  Zygote and zealots.

“Now, at first glance these two words would seem to have little to do with one another.  But consider:  A zygote is a precursor tp a fetus.  It’s a fair question to ask when a person actually becomes a person.

“To the ancient Hebrews, one’s humanity was only established with the first breath drawn outside the womb.

“The Greeks advocated for the quickening, the point when a fetus begins moving.  Yet it can be fairly argued that in the days and weeks preceding the quickening, the fetus has achieved enough physical development to allow the first sparks of consciousness to begin manifesting themselves.

“While I could go on at length as to what does or does not constitute consciousness and / or identity, that’s beyond the purview pf our discussion.

“Returning to Kant, the letter Z is also associated with zealot, and religious zealots often claim personhood begins at the moment of conception.  This is problematic for a variety of reasons, but it does serve to associate the ‘Z’-ness of zygote and zealot.”

“Zodiac.”

“Pardon?”

“Do zodiac next.  How does that tie in with zygote and zealot.”

“Well, it should be obvious, shouldn’t it?  In the West the zodiac is based on the mythology of the ancient Greeks, the same culture that argued personhood is manifested only with the quickening.

“In addition, belief in astrology is often vehemently opposed by religious zealots, so any attempt to introduce the zodiac into the discussion only results in them rejecting the concept, in effect aborting it.”

“Rendering it a zero.”

“Precisely.  Now you’re catching on.”

“Question:  Why did Kant start at the end of the alphabet?”

“Presumably to work his way forward and end with A, which is not merely the first letter but the first vowel.  Kant argued it’s only the presence of the letter A that makes the rest of the alphabet.  Indeed, he often said without the letter A, he himself would be incomplete.”

“So in other words, Kant was a complete A-whole.

“Why are you picking up that chair?”

© Buzz Dixon