A Huge Thing

The fiction of the world is a huge thing because it is in Derrida's words ‘the only thing that can make it possible that I can live and have or let you live, enjoy or have or let you enjoy, to carry you for a few minutes without anything happening,’ in a movement of farewell without beginning, without mourning, with the irresistible force of a whirlpool, or a maelstrom: what Poe calls ‘the immense sweeps and swelters of the whirl.’ The maelstrom sweeps, it is an immense sweep, a sweeping away, it is ‘going going away, leaving no trace.’ Throw away your watch; let go the iron ring.