Ben Lewellyn-Taylor

by Ben Lewellyn-Taylor

If you’ll forgive me, I’m going to use this space to talk about myself, because I am both the subject I know the best and also—it sometimes seems—not at all. As these nonsermons are inspired by e.e. cummings’ nonlectures, I am drawn to his reasoning for spending so much time on the self: “Who, if I may be so inconsiderate as to ask, isn’t egocentric? Half a century of time and several continents of space, in addition to a healthily developed curiosity, haven’t yet enabled me to locate a single peripherally situated ego.”

Perhaps, he goes on to say, he hasn’t met the right people; perhaps neither have I.

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I have returned to the subject in my mind already too many times, but I believe repetition is necessary in order to really live the lessons we claim to have learned. Maggie Nelson refers to this perpetual…