Iris

Iris the Platonist rolls her eyes at the Logical Positivists. She relishes the god Wittgenstein, but not the Wittgensteinians. That much is the case. She prepares for today’s seminar by having Hume for breakfast. Existentialists have to be accounted for. There are so many of them. They roam in packs. One thing they have in common is their differences. Makes it worthwhile going back to the classics, they are so full of common sense. At least Hume knows how to talk to people. More tea, thank you. Universities are zoos. Last week she spoke to a flock of parrots. Next week it’s to be a club of hyenas. A novel is not a zoo. Characters escape labels, change their minds for some unknown reason. They don’t have to compile the bibliography. They can, however, turn into types. Iris the Letters lets you know there is nothing more precious than love and friendship. Enthusiastically she offers these views to her friends. Sign-offs that never sigh, other than wanting to be with them. Sometimes, forever. She wishes you to know Australia is very big, having now seen Australia for herself. Big, and friendly. She has written a novel and would you believe it someone, a friend, says it’s about them. They can see what’s going on. So there will be mending of fences and reconstruction of bridges and anyway Iris the Storyteller doesn’t write about people she knows, only about people in her mind. Let the Post-Structuralists explain that, before they exit, pursued by a bear. Iris the Dame is a lifetime existence inside a world where her friend devises the lion & unicorn crest on the British passport. At least I’m Irish, she says, when other identities waver. When all else fails, Irish. Being British, there’s too much baggage. Makes her want to be a Buddhist. Iris the Irishwoman has managed her aitches with ease. It’s metaphysics that prove disorderly. There are always exceptions in every crowd. Moreover, everyone is exceptional, ready to surprise you just when you had given up on them. Yet there is commonality, call it love or goodness. Sounds so simple, put like that. Is it? Iris the Film can no longer speak French philosophy like no-one else. She cannot speak French philosophy like herself. She can no longer hold court at a long college dining table. She is pictured as a brain scan. The colour ratios are not promising. It will kill her, says the angel of death in the form of a logical positivist doctor. It itself is not named. Her body could swim that no longer knows how to swim. Jokes that went thick and fast have thinned to a halt. It’s a whole new job for a husband. Iris the Memoir is her husband’s way of living with the job called grief. Grief for a woman who is there, and not there at the same time. The memoir in her mind though, where is it going next? Perhaps the only relationships now are being conducted inside her. Even the angel of death’s scanner cannot say if Iris the Memoir has relationships, with whom, at what times, and about what. Her eyes roll from one object to another. There is no need to have the name for each one. Like a character in a novel, her mind is on other things.