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Show 'Lorraine Nelson A Biography .." | 20 substantial, more final than any of the actual persons or daily activities which populated my office day. I'd like to think myself immune to the failures of forgetting and inattention. As a writer and scholar I have been instructed that my very worth is dependent on it. But there were perhaps weeks I sailed through without registering more than the smallest and most impermanent hue. Even years later, it is Lorraine who occupies me-not Tina, Katie, Mr. Benmen, or any of the now nameless and formless others who have slipped from my recollection of that year. I am certain that were I to pass them tomorrow in the grocery aisle or street, it would be as if for the first time. What I have written here-because it is what I remember-is not their story, not even my own, but Lorraine's. All I have left are these fragments, stitched together like a life the biographer finally defaulted. The day I left DDS, I scribbled Kill Lorraine Nelson on a single Post-it Note. I envisioned filling thousands of Post-it Notes with this reminder-one for every life deferred-papering the walls of my small cubicle-a universe of sprightly yellow tongues wagging their homicidal message. Of course, I recognized the theatricality of it, the way it artificially and symbolically put in balance my time at DDS-and perhaps, too, its feeble attempt at exerting my independence from her, at having the last word. Still, I couldn't resist. It was both a surrender and my final transgression. I thought of it then-and still do-as my last and only love, note to her. But Lorraine Nelson cannot be killed. She is the genius loci of the office space, the deus ex machina of the corporate machine, the atua above the tutelary deities of Post-it Note and fluorescent bulb, paperclip and stapler. In the Baudriardian sense, she is pure simulacra, a copy of a copy of a copy in endless regression. She. stands alone. No original. No origin. Both the virgin mother of the disposable office supply industry and the immaculate birth. Even the name, "Lorraine Nelson," is an inexact convenience, a way of naming that which is unnamable. |
