A Review
The Feminine Sea, Void of Gathering, and Apprehension; the Masculine Land, Ship of Calculating, and Concluding
“The Mermaid” by Sam Green is a beautiful tale that orbits masculine and feminine energies, logics, and attitudes in a work that is impossible outside of literature: a reason I think we suffer so much chaos and yet also stagnancy is that we try to discuss issues like gender within politics, which is too either/or, linear, and simplistic to prove useful. (often reifying the “thinghood” and “point-hood” that Owen Barfield warned was idolatry). As also suggested in “Fiction Is the Mathematics of the Humanities” by O.G. Rose, literature entails higher dimensionality, and it is the appropriate medium for social problems of higher geometry. Alluding to thinkers like Jim Rutt, if we keep approaching complex problems (not simply complicated problems) through low-order means likes politics or mere sequential logic, we will continue to just make the problems worse. As Sam Willman has also suggested in “The Geometry of Gender Relations,” gender is a high dimensionality problem, and so it is best to approach through literature, exactly as Sam Green has in story.
What are the consequences if we don’t so employ literature? We make the mistake Alfred Korzybski warns about (that I often reference) when he tells us that if we tried to use Roman Numerals to do Modern Physics, we literally couldn’t, and the consequences would be dire. This point also brings to mind Eric Harris-Braun’s work on “Grammatics,” as discussed at Voicecraft, where it is suggested that our development is indivisible from the grammars by and through which we consider our development (“the grammar is the way,” to play off McLuhan).
To dive into the story, Sam associates the ocean with the feminine and the land with the masculine, and it is the loss of the protagonist Thomas’s innocence, as occurred with the shooting of a fawn (‘Thomas could have sworn the fawn’s blood was gray’) that drives him out to sea. This seems like he is developing and maturing, but actually he is only “on the sea”; he is not yet “in the sea,” which is to say he flirts with the feminine but doesn’t dive in. Devastation can drive the male to the void, which Sam associates with the feminine ocean, but Sam suggests the male might not dive in like the female, which is needed for the full transformation of the male (he might have to be pulled or driven in by something horrible that he also comes to choose, as Thomas does when he ‘set down the knife for her to take’).
‘Seeing his reflection in the eyes of a fawn opened his heart to the nature of God […] the closest thing to magic,’ Sam tells us about Thomas, and then the fawn is shot. If “the fawn” is encountered again as the friend with the tulip (a critical associational change), this is only possible in the void, which is where Thomas can regain the sense that his father shakes him out of when his father ‘shake[s] him senseless’ (an incredible description, that is justified and not forced by the line being used when Thomas is unsure if ‘the fawn’s blood was gray’). “Seeing God” and “entering the void” are connected, which is also “entering a dream-space,” which has Freudian and psychoanalytical association (‘They sing me to sing. What emerges from the deep?’). The dream is that which might have never happened, as is possible with the whole story (‘ “It’s nothing, Thomas grin[s]’ at the end), but that’s precisely why the dream can be where “the void” (which always must be that which “does/might not exist”) makes connections between things that are connected by nothing and so prove a path to personal development that can only be “personal” and “developing” (“unfolding”): the “plausible deniability” that it was something else cannot be the case.
Why does Sam associate the feminine with the void? Because the feminine is a deep and multivariant reality, who by her very body and menstrual cycles and pregnancy is forced to stay in touch with “the physical,” “the real,” and “the truth” — a point which brings to mind why Freud associated feminine with the hysterical, not because the feminine were irrational, but because they better knew the truth and couldn’t rationalize away from it as easily as could the male. The feminine is more nonrational, which means it is harder to quantify, which means it is more frightening and yet also potentially more full and beautiful. The masculine is more rational, which it is easier to quantify, which means it is less frightening, easy to employe for practical ends, but also more likely to rationalize, fall into “autonomous rationality,” and repress human experience into a single dimension. The female feels things deeper, it can be said; if this is so, it could be because they are deeper, a void. If men are more rational, it could be because they are shallower.
We have discussed in O.G. Rose that if we experience the void and “Real” too much too soon it will destroy us (Love(craft)): we require the encounter gradually at a rate we can handle. The masculine through rationality and construction can “filter” our experience of the feminine and nonrationality so that we can handle “the truth of the apophatic void” to a degree we can handle; without this filtration (“The Symbolic”), all people of all ages and levels of developments would easily encounter “The Real,” which would likely prove “too soon” and devastating. The masculine is very important for this reason, but it is not “the truth of the void” that is found in the feminine, without which the male will easily rationalize, avoid, and never fully develop. However, if there is just the feminine, the depths of the void and truth would overwhelm us, and we would not “sail across the sea.” We require both, but it is perhaps more likely we end up “overly-masculine,” especially in our age today, because we are trained and habituated by quantification and technology to think of everything “nonquantifiable” as “not real.” Our emphasis on rationality also hurts us, contributing to “nonrationality” and suggesting the importance of Sam’s literary work.
Until the mermaid draws him, Thomas goes to the void, but he doesn’t face the void; he actually avoids the void by staying on its surface, whereas the mermaid is “in the thing” (a difference we might associate with how Cadell Last describes the difference between Hegel and Kant). ‘There are mermaids in the deep waiting, waiting until you fall asleep’ — the opening line of the story suggests we must sleep to experience mermaids, which might mean they are a dream or that which are dangerous. It’s both (Sam’s work is full of genius ambiguities, true to life), and often Sam connects “dream” and “void” (‘His dream, his dream, what a peculiar void of a thing, where the claws come out and rip open the chest, to pull out whatever was hiding.’). “The void” is not a simple nothingness in Sam’s work: it is pregnant. There is beauty and transformation to be found, but also horror and danger: a double valency that many of our great myths and stories maintain, but not always our modern, linear melodramas. But it is more natural for the male to stay on its surface, hence why the mermaid says, ‘ “I admire your descent.” / “My descent?” / “Did you not leave the structure of the land? Descend in the void to heal what is dead?” ’ Courage resurrects. The void must seem like death to birth the dead alive.
‘If you touch reflecting waters, / time will not lose grace. “But will it take my pain away?” ’ –Sam opens her story with poetry, reminiscent of Yeats, and suggests there is a fear in the male to leap into the ocean, because what if nothing comes of it? What if the void makes the pain worse? That’s the risk, but there must be that risk or there cannot be healing. Ah, there are too many questions, and so Thomas drinks (‘an elderly fishman held out a bottle of whiskey’) — perhaps Thomas could have never jumped into the void otherwise? Salvation might come from the bottle; it doesn’t have to be an avoidance. But if the male tends to drink when faced with the void, this might be why the feminine must “pull him in,” which the drink might numb the male up for, but only if the feminine is there to do the pulling in (ultimately, there needs to be “a medium condition” that “pulls,” or else the drinking will just be numbing, not “opening up for” — but that will be elaborated on in Belonging Again). The captain gives Thomas a drink and says, ‘ “It will keep the demons away.’ ” Yes, but it won’t keep away the monsters/mermaids — perhaps demons are those who keep away monsters/mermaids? Well, that assumes drink helps us encounter mermaids, but if not then drink might keep away demons, monsters, and mermaids, which the possibility of one makes possible all the others: we cannot avoid entirely the demonic without also avoiding the angelic. But yes, there can be ‘a thousand stories within a sip of beer to drink,’ but perhaps not without a tentacle that sneaks up…Otherwise, the male might just ‘be[come] the water, swaying, feeling nothing at all,’ which seems like “facing the void,” but really it is getting lost in it, like a male getting lost in the beauty of the feminine without ever facing the feminine…(“ ‘Better to die in the deep blue, yes? Thomas!” ’)
‘ “The ocean will shallow you up,” his mother would tell him’ (a female), knowing what she contains, but Thomas forgets what mother said and sails on. Sam describes Thomas as a “fisherman,” which is interesting because they stay on the surface of the water seeing what they can catch, whereas Thomas doesn’t undergo deep transformation until he is pulled into the water by the mermaid, who appears to him at first as a grotesque monster (as must all things which would pull us into “the void,” Lack, “The Real”…for otherwise we might choose to engage with them, concluded by rationality, and hence not an experience of negativity). Before the mermaid is met though, the captain and Thomas kill a squid, which actually might be a mermaid too still in disguise, but I’m not sure. Regardless, the creature is killed outside the ocean, as if the masculine is where work and obligation can kill, but even in that realm there is a possibility for a moment when ‘eyes me[e]t’ and Thomas is ‘unsure why he wan[s] to cry.’ The male can have this experience of the mysterious and feminine even if he “doesn’t dive into the void,” and this memory can compel him (as “glimmers of eternity” can motivate us to say the SCM). But is the male compelled to “dive into the void” or simply contain the void into nice exhibits that can be enjoyed at a distance (where the male can acknowledge his limitation but in the same act as deeming women in error: ‘ “You stupid son of a foolish woman.” ’ )? This can be the temptation of the male with the female, as Sam alludes to when she describes “the pools” — a wrong approach to the feminine.
The captain tells Thomas to get some rest, that ‘[t]he hunt starts soon and the mermaids are tricky’ (a brilliant way to introduce the fantastical elements of the story in an ambiguous way that leaves the readers unsure but open), and we later learn in a flashback (that is in italics like the dreams and associational chains, merging all of them into a similar mental act) that the Captain said to Thomas, ‘ “Mermaids are horrendous, so grotesquely divine that they cause men to venture out to the sea in the hope they will capture one, lock her up in their pools so they can admire her without fear of the unknown.” ’ This dialogue is excellent (I love the phrase “grotesquely divine”), and it frames the temptation of how the masculine can relate to the feminine: make the unknown something we look at and maybe come across (like a ship on the sea), but don’t jump into the sea with her. That is to jump into the unknown. That is dangerous. (‘There is nothing that a mermaid cannot do when she has a hold of an unprepared man’ — so is written after the mermaid leaps up and pulls him in. Also, the unknown might not be so still.) It is only in the void that we can “find what we are looking for,” but we can be tempted to instead just look at the void and admire it (which Nietzsche perhaps warned about). This is a mistaken use of masculinity. It is a failure of personal development. But it is done because otherwise ‘[we] seek an experience that cannot be captured. For what? The men will not admire your empty pool.’ The mermaid will die in the pool, for ‘[a] pool is not an ocean,’ but such is such. ‘You will say to them, ‘I swam with a mermaid. I sunk to the depths of the ocean.’ I — and I will be frank with you — this world is structured upon land, and that is all.’ Land is masculine. Ocean is feminine. The ocean is where things do not die but they cannot be captured and so are thought of as not real. Land has echoes of life disbelieved. Land says, ‘Out there, the water is deep, but it is void. There is nothing but sunken decay and simple-minded fish.’ Those who do not reason and calculate (masculine) but gather and apprehend (feminine). They live for art and art does not pay bills.
When Thomas first sees the mermaid, he calls out to the captain, ‘ “Freedman!” ’ and we don’t know if he is referring to the Captain (who we afterwards learn is called ‘Mr. Echo,’ because his laugh is everywhere across the sea ‘in waves of reassurance’) or the mermaid, as if the mermaid could be someone who fell into the ocean (and so is “free because he is in the void”). This is brilliant writing, for the Captain seems to be a “free man” because he is working on the sea, but this is only as free as a man can be without the feminine: to really be free, the man must jump into the sea. The mermaid says to Thomas, ‘ “Do not bother with him. He will only sleep. It is you I seek.” ’ Thomas will sleep and dream. He is different. ‘ “Submerge into the deep, my darling.’’ ’
Also, the Captain (“Freedman”) tells Thomas to sleep, and Thomas claims sleeping is why he ends up in the sea, as if the place of sleep, which is the place of the sea and void, is the place of freedom and terror. Thomas tells us that:
‘[m]ost fishermen voyage out to sea carrying their spear in one hand and a telescope in the other. They stand rigid, with their muscles flexed to keep their bodies well-planted on the boat. But Freedman insisted on getting sleep, and sleep caused water to filter through the cavity of his nose and burn salt in his lungs.’
This suggests that men use masculinity to avoid the sea and a-void the void, but Thomas doesn’t take this route and instead sleeps and dreams (overlapping “plunging into a sea” with “plunging into a dream”), as if to say it is considered un-masculine of men to dream, and dreaming is why a man can end up in the void. Indeed, it is, but the man who doesn’t go into the void cannot fully develop. He must stay on the surface. He cannot be deep. The mermaid is deep, but perhaps she would not move horizontally without the man to follow and pull in? Hard to say, but Sam has suggested there is a grace for Thomas in sleeping, for it made him vulnerable (as we all are in sleep) to being pulled in, and otherwise he might have never taken the plunge. Instead, we might have ended up with a pool to which we just proved a tourist. ‘ “I will admit that it is refreshing to dip your tour in a pool and gaze at a mermaid; that is why men pay a heavy price to risk their lives like yours to get what they want.’ The Captain continues. ‘Pour salt into the water, and she won’t know the difference. I say this in jest. Eventually, the creatures realize something is amiss, and they die.” ’ If a man gains a woman but doesn’t dive into the void which the feminine knows intimately in their body, he will be the woman’s demise. She will be captured. A captured life cannot live, but that means keeping things alive requires facing nothingness. Isn’t facing the void what gets life killed? Yes, but no. Real danger brings life to life. And so perhaps there is further grace for Thomas in him being unable to afford a pool: this masculine failure in terms of economic providence is perhaps another reason why he is able to enter the void/(w)hole.
‘[B]lood could not travel through his veins’ as Thomas is gripped by the mermaid — or is it because of fear? Is he undergoing a death in the void? Yes. ‘With every flick of her tail and the flickering light of the waning moon, the structure of his life was compressed, shifted, and molded into something new.’ So is the grace/terror of the void, at the bottom of which the mermaid pulls the water out of his lungs. ‘ “You did better than the others,” the mermaid spoke […] “Most men swallow water before we get here.” ’ Most men would prefer to die before facing the depths, but it is here where, regarding the mermaid, ‘[h]er claws […] retract[], and her scales dissolve[] into her skin […] the scent of tulips on her skin.’ And then a key: ‘He did not even have to ask the question for her to answer, “Your logic does not exist here. You are here.” ’ Thomas is here: his logic cannot stand in for him. Thomas is in a place of “associational logic,” possible because of nothingness — a lack of necessity and physical causation — thanks to which personal development is possible. This is perhaps the secret of the feminine. It is a key notion we will unpack later. ‘Every time he blinked, the world around him changed.’
Thomas asks for the mermaid’s name, and she asks why he cares to know her name if he just wants to capture her? Indeed, why do men want to know women if not to know their depths? She has used logic, so Thomas asks why she said there was no logic here, and she says that of course there is logic. ‘ “ I only said that your logic does not exist here.” ’ She then tells him that he has ‘no need to know’ her name, for she is only ‘a fleeing moment,’ which is something rationality struggles to allow, for the real can be made constant and universal. The mermaid suggests the opposite, and perhaps the void is in fact “void” because what it contains is always passing away and passing into something new, and furthermore what is there is too full and complex to be universalized. The void is too full, and so it is void. It is deep because every inch is filled.
We will now for a moment consider differences between feminine and masculine thinking, the different “logics” suggested by the story. This was elaborated on in our conversation (Ep #211), and of course everything that is said on “masculinity” and “femininity” are generalities that do not apply to everyone, for everyone seems to be a mixture of both to some degree that no one can judge for certain. Feminine logic associates and gathers to make a whole that a truth can be apprehend in, while masculine logic calculates and uses rationality to make a conclusion of a truth. To better understand feminine logic, imagine one of those pictures that are made of a lot of small pictures, which are put together in such a way that a large picture can suddenly be seen (from A Philosophy of Glimpses, consider the FedEx Sign that we can look at and suddenly see a negative arrow that was “always already” there and yet easy to miss). As Sam noted, we can think of the female as verbally processing and telling everything that happened in their day in order to gather a collection of images, a whole, that “suddenly and all at once” a truth can be apprehend in and from — it is an aesthetic and artistic act. Like making a FedEx sign, the feminine can do the same in gathering details, describing scenes, acknowledge emotions — all of this can be like gathering little images that put together, bit by bit, in hopes of suddenly and all at once there being a whole (“a big picture,” “Find What the Sailor Has Hidden” in Nabokov) in which a truth is apprehended. The woman is gathering things “into nothing” for most of the time, without any clear reason, and then “suddenly and all at once” in the nothing there is a reason. The woman is making a void. And then suddenly that void smells like tulips.
It can seem like a logical waste of time to gather a bunch of details, to paint descriptive scenes in literature, etc. — I’m guilty of once thinking this way — but, to stress, we need to see this activity like gathering all the “small pictures” that, put together, make it possible to apprehend “a big picture” that only exists because of the small pictures. Again, consider the FedEx Arrow with “the negative space”-arrow in the sign: if we don’t gather the blue and orange paints, the letters, and all the other necessary variables, it wouldn’t be possible to apprehend that “negative space arrow.” The gathering makes possible the apprehension, but are the words “apprehension” and “conclusion” similes? No: they arise differently.
“Masculine logic” does not so gather everything: it discerns what is relevant, narrows to save time and energy, and considers the relevant factors together into a relevant conclusion. It is much more efficient, for good and for bad, because if there was a “apprehensible truth” in the variables with which the male worked, the male could miss it, because he would not gather all the variables together as necessary for apprehension and instead leave most behind. A line that repeats in the story: ‘Write the rules so he understands until — what emerges in the deep?’ Use logic until it inhibits apprehension. Calculate so we understand how to gather but then gather or else nothing will emerge. Isn’t that safer? Yes, it is safe not to take the plunge. (“Life” and “safety” eventually split off.) (But note that we have discussed in our review of Oppenheimer that the masculine (rational) without the feminine (nonrational) ends up in Game Theory Problems that lead to self-effacement…)
And here is a key: personal development requires an apprehension of a gathering. We cannot develop as persons without feminine logic. We might gain economic security. We might gain status. But we cannot gain personal development. The male might lack that depth, and if that depth is necessary for a thriving life, that is a major loss. Now, a risk of “gathering and apprehending” is that we see connections that aren’t there, which means we might end up in a fantasy or conspiracy (that is then “internally consistent” and difficult to escape). Masculine logic seems more likely to end up in “reductionism” and “autonomous rationality” that cannot escape various Game Theory problem, but feminine logic can end up in a trap of its own making. Basically, both are at great risk without the other, but both are hard for the other to make sense of from within their own logic and thinking. How can the divide be crossed? The right environment. An act of grace and surprise.
Why do I say that personal development must come from feminine logic? Because it must be arrived at through a process where there is no plausible deniability regarding that it wasn’t personal, meaning it can’t be reasonably attributed to outside causal forces. How is that possible? Well, by the process occurring through and with nothingness, which is to say “in the void,” for that is the place where “associational logic” can have dominion and thus lead us to the truth we need for personal development that can only be found in the void, where it cannot be denied that associational logic is at work. There are many paragraphs and sections of association in the story (‘His dream, his dream […] The fisherman are coming!’) — this suggests an awareness Sam has of the different logics she is considering. ‘Oceanus absrbebit te.’ “The ocean will wash you away.” There is no telling where associations in the void will lead us; likewise, there is no telling where associations will take us in the subconscious — Sam’s story is a great dreamwork of the psychoanalyst, of following and unlocking associations so that we can follow them to the truth of ourselves that we can bring out of ourselves through association. But do we keep what we learn? Or do we say, ‘ “It’s nothing” ’?
To explain all this, let us return to the story, where the mermaid brings Thomas to the bottom of the ocean/void into a cavern, he smells tulips, and then very abruptly is taken back into the water. He is given ‘grace to breathe this time’ though, for he has overcome the temptation to swallow water and avoid the void, and the mermaid swims around him and ‘[h]is soul [is] etched into a painting’ (a whole which can be apprehended, please note). ‘The nothingness glimmered with the light of sun and water, transformed into a garden.’ Thomas is back in the scene of his youth. He plucks a tulip. He is reaching for the fawn but withdraws his hand at his father’s voice (the male does not want to be shamed before the male). ‘No. Thomas had become the fawn […] / BAM!’ Thomas awakens back in the cavern, and the mermaid is more like a girl than a monster. ‘There was nothing horrendous about her.’ Thomas has traveled through the void, which is a journey through memory and association, and there is growing beauty. ‘He did not have to ask the mermaid’s name. He already knew it.’ Apprehended, not calculated. He says the name. ‘[T]ulips ris[e] from the cavern floor’ The mermaid kisses his forehead. ‘Water flooded the cavern.’ And Thomas remembers his friend. ‘A little girl named Elise followed Thomas into the woods.’ Thomas remembered the fawn, but the memory of the fawn was just a step to the memory of the girl. He had to go in to the void to complete the associational chain. Thomas wished on his sixth birthday that the girl would get better. She gives him a present, ‘an orange tulip.’ Thomas wiped tears away from his face — the last time he cried — an answer to the mystery. And Elise tells him that touching a fawn will ‘make anything you want come true.’
Tommy has gone on “an associational journey,” a feminine journey of figuring out how everything connects by gathering it all together to apprehend the whole, like a painting, which can only be done with and in the deep, the void, because otherwise everything cannot be found together in us, and furthermore it is only in the depths and void of ourselves that we can find the pieces that we need to associate together on a journey of discovering ourselves and what we contain. ‘Their eyes met, and there it was again — the smell of tulips.’ The tulip image keeps coming and going in the story, because it is in Thomas and won’t leave him alone and behind. It can’t. It’s nothing. And so there is always hope of that which in Thomas can, layer by layer, gather together the images and experiences of his life into a (w)hole. And suddenly and all at once, without calculatable explanation, there is an apprehension. Elise.
All this must be associational, which is psychoanalytical, for otherwise the connections could be attributed to say causality, physics, biology, or something else. This is crucial: where we enter nothingness, nothing is there to make connections for us; we must make them. Thus, the connections must be personal, and so they must be testaments of personal development. It is only in “the void” that there is no doubt that personal development occurred, and it is when there is “no doubt that personal development occurred” that we personally develop, for then then journey is ours and cannot be reasoned or attributed away. We went on that journey. Nothing else was there, just us, going deeper and deeper so that the associations could connect and gather themselves into the whole we needed for apprehending the truth. Thomas missed his friend. He knew that about himself. He became more himself.
‘ “Tommy?” The bartender says. “Tommy.” ’ Did Tommy go anywhere? Did he go out to see/sea? Or did he go nowhere, into nothingness? Yes, he did. He is in a bar. He did (not) go: he has been himself. But because he didn’t go anywhere, he could have gone into a void. The opportunity for going into a void is always with us, anywhere — a grace. There is always what we need for “an associational journey” within ourselves, within our depths, a reality to which the feminine can be a testimony. We can at any moment undergo personal development. There is always hope, for there is always a chance for terror and drowning.
The connections between things, if they are to be paths of a personal journey, must be connections of nothingness — nothing(ness)-but-us — or else they could be attributed to economics, sociology…something not us and thus not nothing. There is no necessary or rational connection between a fawn, a ship, a mermaid, a tulip, and a drink, but in Thomas, these things can connected, and so must point to a life that connects them, which is the life of Thomas, and in realizing this, he can personally develop. Thomas has gathered together the small images of his life into a whole, and then suddenly is able to apprehend “a picture in the picture” he wasn’t able to see. And yet nothing has changed: he is the same person, and the images are the same images. Nothing changed, and so the change must be one of personal development. Nothing changed, and he is not the same.
It is in the void where it is possible to experience a personal development that must be a “personal development,” for the associational logic that “unfolds” cannot be attributed to anything outside the person; after all, in the void, there’s nothing there (just us). The feminine as void is an invitation into the place where we can undeniably experience personal development (and keep in mind what we learned in Freud about most masculine reason being rationalization), but the outcome can’t be known ahead of the journey, for then it would have been a process of rational calculation and understanding; similarly, if an artist knows ahead of time why he or she is writing a story, it easily cannot be a nonrational “nothingness” which in we can apprehend a (w)hole. And all of this is available to us, but then a bartender talks to us and we tell him we saw, ‘ “A mermaid in [our] drink” ’ — there was an association, the beginning of a journey — and this is a joke. We dismiss what we gained. And we have nothing.
The feminine associates and gathers to apprehension in the (apathetic) void, while the masculine calculates to a conclusion from/over the void — both are needed or we are self-effaced. Does Thomas learn this lesson? He tells the bartender he remembered something. ‘A friend who was kind […]’ He was associated to the memory through a fawn, ship, mermaid, tulip…He has gone (nowhere), far and deep. The bartender laughs. ‘ “You’re a bit of a mess there,” ’ and Thomas averts his eyes and apologizes. The male is embarrassed before the male — does he disown the feminine truth he has gained? The bartender suddenly finds it ‘difficult to breathe. The air had become thin, like a cavern in the ocean.’ (Is the dream still on?) We are told that it will all ‘stay in this drink,’ but the bartender says then, ‘ “Tell me about it,”’ which is beautiful dialogue, for it could be a dismal or a plea. The male could want to know what is in the void. The bartender might have his own “Elise,” found at the end of an associational gathering, through a ‘mermaid, that is nothing […] there all along, the void bridge that turned into art […] a thousand stories within a sip of beer […]’
‘ “It’s nothing,” Thomas grinned, taking his last drink of alcohol for good.’
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For more work by Sam Green, please check out her website and also her wonderful YouTube Channel.
