The
Beginning
“In the beginning was ‘The
Beginning’. There, right at the top of
the page, just above the beginning of the story which began at ‘The
Beginning’...or
rather just below it at the first line; you know, the one beginning “In
the
beginning”.
The author, whom we shall
call “The Author” to preserve his anonymity (although it is actually
fame that
he has sought all his life), began to read his story from ‘The
Beginning’ and
felt strange. He began to think that, if
he changed the beginning of ‘The Beginning’, the base of his argument
would
vanish. The argument was... (he couldn’t
actually remember against whom or what he was arguing; it was more of
an
unsolicited statement about independent thinking... or something) ...where was I? Oh,
yes, of course. The argument (or
statement) was that there
must be a well identified beginning in every piece of text, to
discourage the
practice of casually flicking pages of a magazine back to front while
holding a
cup of coffee in the left hand and pretending that you actually read
anything
through.. to the end. Well, you see, in
reading a story beginning properly at The Beginning back to front,
one
would find the end at The Beginning.
“Fancy that”, The Author
thought: “The End at The Beginning”! Now, what was that at the back of his
mind? Yes! The Moebius strip that his
math mistress kept telling them about while they were looking up her
short
skirt... They were thinking of The
Moebius Strip as something ‘The Mistress’ might have performed while
high on
drugs in a Dutch bar called ‘The Moebius’ late at night...
Well, no. The
Moebius Strip had neither beginning nor
end, which is not exactly as a story with an End at The Beginning. He felt compelled to write a story that ran
round and round as though it began at...
The Beginning
“In the beginning was The
End”