Grammatik Struktur (or "Who lives here?")

by Slavoj Zizek

Rating: teen
Tags: Human, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Sunset Shimmer, Random, Slice of Life
Length: 1496

Sunset Shimmer discovers herself in an apartment with Anon. They have a pointless argument. The Universe and the foundations of knowledge are questioned. There is no satisfactory resolution.

Sunset Shimmer discovers herself in an apartment with Anon. They have a pointless argument. The Universe and the foundations of knowledge are questioned. There is no satisfactory resolution.

Published 2014-04-20 14:50:02 UTC
Last updated 2014-04-20 14:50:02 UTC

Signifier and Signified

Sunset Shimmer stare at green man, her bacon colored hair a fiery frizz of flustration. Green man press against wall at his back. He can smell danger smell crackling in his nostrils.

Sunset Shimmer turn her eyes over objects visible, pressing each one into her mental clay, forming the relationship between signifier and signified. Object that is chair, defined by purposeful action "to sit," object that is doorknob, defined by purposeful action "to grasp," object that is Green man, defined by purposeful action "to berate," and so on. She establish each thing in its at-handness, then she turn to Green Man. Her arms cross over her proud chest puffed skyward by a push-up bra.

She say, "Anon, what the hell am I doing in your apartment?"

"It isn't my apartment," Green man calmly reply while scraping eggs into the sink. An entire bowl full of eggs. Green man thought it was appropriate, but it was not.

"It isn't yours? Then where are we? Whose apartment?"

"Yes, Hu's apartment," Green man reply.

"That's what I said. Who lives here?"

"Hu lives here, yes. It's his apartment."

"Whose?"

"Yes, Hu. Why do you keep asking me this?"

"Goddammit, I asked you where we are. Who lives here?"

"And I said, yes, this is Hu's apartment."

"Whose?"

"Yes, Hu's."

"That's what I said, Nerd. Whose apartment?"

"No," Green man remain calm and speak slow, "Nerd-Hu lives across the street."

"Who lives across the street?"

"No, Hu lives here."

Sunset stamp her foot and grind her heel on the floor. "That's what I asked you: who lives here?"

"That's what I told you: Hu lives here."

"Yes."

"Of course!"

"What?"

"No." Green man shake Green head, "Watt lives two floors down from here."

"Who does?"

"No, Hu lives here."

Sunset Shimmer spin in a circle and stomp her feet again. She can't stop her movements, can't understand why Green man is such an idiot, can't understand why she doesn't just leave.

She finally speak, "why do you keep dodging my question?"

"What question?"

"Who lives here?"

"Yes."

Sunset stop again. She grit her teeth, rub her mandible against crotch between her thumb and forefinger. She analyze the furniture as if she hope the fouton tell her something. The quality "black" is created in her brain after electromagnetic waves bounce off the futon's surface and scrape across her face and eyes, this assertion of "blackness" is layered over the futon as her brain forms the mental image. This process is so fast, it make Sunset Shimmer believe in qualia and the possibility of meaningful statements that exist in the objective universe before the human mind create them.

After several minutes, she realize the fouton won't be speaking. She has only Green man, her tormenter, who has brought her here to Hu's apartment. A room with no view.

"We, our subjective existences," she gesture across her pert breasts and Green man's green chest, "each of us, we must exist somewhere, right? There must be a center point, held by our bourgeois identity to be an individual, self-responsible monad, a point from which we perceive the rest of the Universe?"

"Assuming a philosophy of naive realism and a healthy brain, yes this would be true."

"And we live in a capitalist system, where property ownership is considered an extent of the person's being? That I exchanged my labor power for money, which in turn I exchanged for this leather jacket or for a couch, it makes it mine and a part of me?"

"Yes."

"So this apartment, this building someone owns it? There exists a piece of paper listing the property and it has a name signed to it. This piece of paper makes the building a part of that person, to the extent that they must take moral and legal responsibility for it?"

"Our father," you confirm.

"Who?"

"Yes, Hu's father and mine. We're brothers."

"Anon, I'm not talking about God's ownership of this world as expressed in the book of Genesis, in which all men come from the same father and are appointed only as steward of things. I'm talking about in terms of our capitalist reality. I was very specific."

"So was I!"

"No. I mean," Sunset grasp her hair in her hands and her lip in her teeth and her eyes in her lids and her fury in her heart beating toward an explosion, "I mean. This apartment is leased, right? And someone has to sign the lease? There's a name on the lease? What's the name on the lease?"

"No, Watt's the name on the lease for the apartment two floors down."

"I didn't ask about the apartment two floors down, nerd, who-"

"Nerd-Hu lives across the way." Green man automatically corrects. Green man cringes. Green man watches the rage mount higher, helpless to protect himself.

"Don't call me a nerd!"

"I didn't call you a nerd."

"You just did!"

"You didn't, you asked about Nerd-Hu."

"Yes, wait - what?"

Green man look around in shock. Could Watt have entered the room? But, no, it is just Green man and this other Becoming, both becoming very frustrated.

"Watt's not here."

"Who's not here?"

"He's not here either."

"Who?"

"Yes, Hu."

"That's what I'm asking you."

"And that's what I'm telling you."

"You haven't told me anything!"

"I told you everything!" Green man know this is not true. He has not told her anything. Green man only express signifier, but signified is somewhere deeper. Green man feel great shame, truly this interaction with other is the greatest agony, this impossibility of true connection. Green man's heart heavies with angst.

"I ..." Sunset Shimmer twirl in place again. She can't survive this, Hu could, but she's not him. She's just a material girl in a material world, and she grit her material teeth against the ethereal madness in her surroundings. Together, Green man and Sunset suffer this Hell of other people. Together, but also each alone. "Back to what I was saying, nerd. Who-"

"Nerd-Hu is on vacation."

"How should I know who is on vacation?"

"Hu didn't go on vacation."

"They all did?"

"Who did?"

"No, fuck it, I don't care."

"But I do care." Green man reach your hand toward her face in a sudden gesture of longing, "I care so much it hurts, as I strive to reach across the infinite void of impossible communication, as I strain to express in words the Truth that can only dwell in the heart. As I pound myself against the walls of my limited, broken subjective world, desperate to reach out to you. Desperate to pierce your walls and mine, desperate to make you understand as I do," Green man grasps her surprised face between green hands. Green man look deep into her eyes. Green man feel tears in his eyes as he struggle to speak the words, "to understand me when I say: We're in Hu's apartment."

Sunset throw Green man off and step away. "How should I know who's apartment?"

"Because we're in it."

"That doesn't mean I know who's apartment."

"Well, what would you need to know it? What will satisfy your epistemic craving?"

"You could quit being such an ass and just tell me the truth."

"But, can there be an objective truth? In a world as uncertain and prone to chaos as this one, a world born from the very principles of disorder-"

Green man stop his speaking and reached up and felt and, indeed, his mouth had disappeared. Sunset Shimmer flipped her bacon hair in the pan, and it was a very why not feeling as Hu entered the room in a very non-Godot fashion, unraveling his being into a question mark.

Twilight Sparkle leaped up from her bed. Her bare feet were on the ground in an instant and she ran, wearing only her night clothes, ran still only half-awake, ran grabbing a book from her bedside table, ran barely disturbing her loyal dog who slept at the foot of her bed, ran on light feet toward the gentle light coming from the window, and maintaining her momentum she flung the book.

The book hit the glass and rattled it in its frame. The mangy cat who had sat staring at her there in the moonlight only smiled back at her reaction. It's tail twitched slightly from right to left, and it's lazy yellow eyes watched her.

"Discord," she hissed the name she had given the cat, "I don't know how you do that, but stay out of my dreams."

The stray only stared at her for another few minutes, then scratched its patchy coat and leapt down, scampering away into the darkened alleyways.

"Freaking cat," Twilight murmured to herself, scratching at her fussed hair.

"Freaking cat."

She already regretted throwing the book and overreacting as much as she had. She paused to scritch Spike on his neck before climbing back under the covers and returning to sleep.