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His last book, Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing, ends mid-sentence, incomplete because he was interrupted at his work by a friend and died before he could return to the desk. The sentence reads: Without the wasps, a large number of plants which play an important part in holding the terrain in place 

died. 

stared directly into the face of the void. 

were able to perceive a world absent the wasps.

were able to perceive the world absent themselves.

were left unfertilized, and could not propagate. 

saw their friends and futures wilt simultaneously. 

worried over the few and declining moments they had left in which to propagate. 

felt lonely and abandoned by those (the wasps) who used to visit them. 

felt themselves cut off from a possible functional potential.

felt thwarted regardless of their desire’s direction re: holding the terrain in place. 

had a moment of clarity re: the futility of panic-blaming the wasps, then forgot it.

found it impossible to rewrite their formerly held scripts for the future. 

found it impossible to move on without rewriting those scripts.

rooted themselves more firmly in the terrain, redoubling their desire’s direction. 

found the soil wanted no part in their mess, post-wasp-split, and felt doubly rejected.

tried again to resurrect good wasp relations.

left a fifth voicemail when the first four weren’t returned. 

failed to make any good relational headway, having just lost their foundational grounding.

told themselves and their friends that everything is fine despite all evidence to the contrary.

said, it’s not like I thought I would marry the wasps, but I never thought it would end like this.

contemplated the veracity of this statement.

tried again to enjoy basking in the warmth of the sun.

tried again to enjoy basking for as long as they and the sun held out. 

no longer enjoyed basking in the sun.

said, what’s the use, if the wasps aren’t willing to try.

abandoned hope for their future on the terrain and thought it best to move west.

did not think it was selfish behavior on their part to abandon the terrain like the wasps had abandoned them.

did not think it was selfish behavior to stop holding the terrain which had always held them.

packed up their belongings and scouted new ground to settle.

migrated to the westerly Mount Antithesis: where the sun rose at the precise time it used to set.

          whereupon the plants grew into their own opposites.

            a migration which delayed work on any actual thesis.

tried to journal on the plane about what had transpired.

found the experience impossible to relate.

tried to distract themselves after settling down out west with meditation.

          with bad poetry.

          with two-step classes.

          with seven sad first dates.

                                                      with an adopted collie named the void.

successfully distracted themselves with the company of books and the love of the void.

read The Collected Short Stories of Franz Kafka.

read a primer called Notes on Conceptualisms.

read an essay by their creator called A Fundamental Experiment.

found hope in the words of their creator, who wrote: “The experience is impossible to relate…”

read in one sitting their creator’s essay about his experimental inhalation of carbon tetrachloride.

discovered that carbon tetrachloride is in fact “even more toxic” than chloroform.

discovered a likeness with their creator, who claimed to have caught an early glimpse of his death.

felt afraid contemplating their creator’s recent death and their now unscripted future narrative.

felt the heft of their fate balanced in their own hands.

felt abandoned by their creator, and then triply rejected.

decided religion was simply not for them anyways. 

felt meanly glad to reject something, to not be rejected.

felt nostalgia for their days with the wasps, and their days before their days with the wasps.

accepted as much as any plants can accept that they would not be fertilized by the wasps. 

        that reproductively speaking the end was near. 

        that desire only lasts so long as it goes unfulfilled.

dreamt themselves the subjects of future watercolors, like dinosaurs or other once-living things.

felt it likely they’d be misremembered in color, shape, or size when they were gone. 

felt it likely they’d be reimagined to better fit the future’s aesthetics.

received a “no reason” text message from the wasps. 

did not recognize the feeling within themselves when the wasps’ text appeared on the screen.

agreed to meet the wasps for lunch at Mount Olive, a Mediterranean spot. 

did not recognize the feeling within themselves when the wasps arrived at Mount Olive.

hardly recognized the wasps as the wasps described new love for all the things they’d always hated. 

ordered a falafel pita for themselves and took two bites, no more than that.

attempted to journal after lunch and found it impossible to relate the extent to which they felt 

     sad.

                      spiteful.

                    satisfied.

discovered they had successfully rewritten an old script.

understood the uncertainty of their future script was a result of their creator’s unfinished business.

understood their creator’s unfinished business was a result of his inhalation of carbon tetrachloride.

understood his inhalation of carbon tetrachloride had to do with his desire to see what lay beyond.

understood that, regardless of consequence, it is sometimes imperative we follow desire.

returned to the terrain on a summer vacation and apologized “for what happened before.”

found the terrain worse off than when they’d left, but holding on despite what had happened.

tried to hold in place what had once held them there.

felt the redemptive power of forgiving yourself, regardless of whether you’ve been forgiven.

lived out many good days on Mount Antithesis with the void.

                with meditation. 

    with two-step classes.

                with bad poetry.

became the subjects of historical watercolors like dinosaurs or other once-living things.

were misremembered in color, shape, and size. 

were reimagined to better fit the present’s aesthetics.

became, in extinction, newly desirable–desired because of their failure to propagate.

discovered firsthand how reductive desire can feel when one is desired without being known. 

went viral on TikTok, Instagram, and Meta.

eventually peaked on Mount Analogue, a VR platform which simulates bygone eras. 

    where desires can be satisfied with just a click.

    where the dead return to life when their switch is flicked. 

                                                                which was a cheap way to sidestep the need of a plot.

__________

Julie Lunde's work has been published or is forthcoming in Fourth Genre, Seneca Review, Passages North, Western Humanities Review, Cream City Review, Essay Daily, and Pigeon Pages. Her writing has been anthologized in 'Letter to A Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us' (Algonquin, 2022) and 'Rooted 2: The Best New Arboreal Nonfiction' (Outpost19, 2023). She serves as an assistant nonfiction editor at DIAGRAM and is the writer in residence at her dog’s house. You can see more at julielunde.com.