Meta/Jason Bellipanni 8 Old Milford Rd. Mont Vernon, NH 03057 Bellipanni@comcast.

net 603-305-5496 11,825 1

Metafiction and the Imagination Consciousness

Greetings, Dear Reader, and welcome to “Metafiction and the Imagination

Consciousness.” No matter where you are, standing in a bookstore, sitting on your living room

sofa, or waiting on line at the airport, the title may cause your brain-bone to signal your finger-

bone to close the book while tellinga your eye-bone to find something else to read. This is your

privilege, being the reader, and even though I have no real control over the context in which

you’ve come across this essay (while hiding from the police in a dumpster, while looking

through boxes of someone’s unpublished material, or while flying your car on your way to

excavate a section of ‘old earth’) I will attempt to perform a moment of lingua-scripto hypnosis

on you. YAWN. Every five minutes after you’ve turned this page in search of something ‘better’

or ‘more interesting’ you will be reminded of this essay by a YAWN, an uncontrollable urge to

YAWN. Even now, you can feel those muscles at the back of your throat—oh, how they long to

be stretched. The YAWN will make you think of this essay; you will not cease to YAWN until

you’ve returned here to do your doody. Duty.

Now then, with my evil plot afoot, we’ll move on to the provocative title. You are

correct to observe that the words of the title attempt to coin a new literary term—‘imagination

consciousness’— by pairing it with the real, but equally unlikely word, ‘Metafiction’. The

success of a new term depends on its musicality as language and its immediate (usually false)
 Meta/Jason Bellipanni 8 Old Milford Rd. Mont Vernon, NH 03057 Bellipanni@comcast.net 603-305-5496 11,825 2

sense of familiarity. The ‘imagination consciousness’ sounds like an idea we should have

studied at one time.

Well here’s another slavish devotee of the imagination, you may be thinking, which is

probably about right. Nonetheless if you do not make yourself more comfortable before you

begin to read this, your irritation is bound to increase and both of us will suffer in the long run.

Probably both of us will suffer in the long run anyway as this seems to be a regular condition of

being human and alive. But of course, I meant suffering in the administrative or academic sense.

A new cup of hot tea or coffee might be just the thing right now, a little booster before you must

train your eyes and your concentration on this attempt at intellectual bravado. Perhaps a cookie

or two, splurge a little.

It seems that an essay of this sort can take one of two (or possibly many more)

approaches. The author might dig up a familiar and well-worn literary text or author, and

through a process of cutting and pasting, slap together an analysis that does nothing more than

re-present some variation of a theory that has been done many times before. The inherent value

in this approach is similar to the rules governing a successful new literary term; that is, the essay

will touch those keys inside your mind which have been touched before, thus bringing familiarity

to the surface and no doubt, some relief on your part. After all, communicating is difficult

enough and we are right to embrace those ideas or theories which we’ve heard and dissected

before; familiarity can very easily stand in for comprehension, and no doubt there are many

masters who have recognized this truth.

Another approach would be to attempt to introduce, explain, and illustrate an idea that

has never before been addressed or exposed. The danger here is painfully obvious—lose the
 Meta/Jason Bellipanni 8 Old Milford Rd. Mont Vernon, NH 03057 Bellipanni@comcast.net 603-305-5496 11,825 3

reader’s attention by plunging the reader into a multi-dimensional maze of interpretations and

retractions.

The dilemma of whether to revive the old or blunder into the new is an ancient one.

Take the first approach and it will be much easier to provoke, through an eloquent

manipulation of well used critical language, the glow of familiarity that often substitutes for

thought. The second approach affords no such cloak and it requires the intestinal fortitude

(guts) to fail out loud, as it were, in front of God and everyone, and to forever be branded as

the one who ‘doesn’t seem to understand much of anything.’ If you sense that I am attempting

to make a case for the more dangerous approach, that I am trying to bring to the surface the

inherent virtue in wrestling with the more impressive beast, you are correct.

At this point, if this were a car show in Detroit, I would step up to center stage where a

silky red cloth has been draped over a monstrous contraption. The lights would dim

throughout the conference center, perhaps throughout the land, except for the spotlight shining

on the spot where I stand, next to the hidden machine; people’s conversations would quickly

dry up and cease. All eyes focus on me and the dreamy sleek sex-rod that must be under such

a shiny and smooth cloth. With one hand posed in a gesture of presentation and the other one

gripping a handful of fabric, I yank it away like a cape and reveal another giant drapery, a

cream-colored silk sheet with giant red letters that continues to hide the mechanism beneath.

A quiet gasp moves like a snake from mouth to mouth and I gaze upon the enormous shiny

red words that appear on this sleek white cloth.

Metacharacter: Characters or People.

If you have used the break in subject to refresh your beverage or grab another cookie, it

is likely that you have forgotten some of what has been stated before. Perhaps an entire day has
 Meta/Jason Bellipanni 8 Old Milford Rd. Mont Vernon, NH 03057 Bellipanni@comcast.net 603-305-5496 11,825 4

passed, or even a week. In an attempt to keep the focus clear it seems only right that I repeat a

certain quote by Patricia Waugh as these specific words seem to have a renewed relevance at

this point. Waugh states, “Through continuous narrative intrusion, the reader is reminded that

not only do characters verbally construct their own realities; they themselves are verbal

constructions not beings” (Waugh 44).

Plotion and Metafict

You know of course, as does everyone in the audience at the auto show that no matter

what appears after I pull away the purple cloth, it is unlikely to be a car of any sort. In fact

you’ve probably grown a bit bored, waiting with the melting ice in your plastic cup, the sweat

on the back of your neck, because no matter how magical of a convention center you are in,

the heat from the mass of bodies is inescapable. The hush has died down into conversation and

some people stand with their backs to the stage. I’m waiting with my hand gripped on the

purple sheet. There is no drum roll and the effect of the spotlight has become virtually

undetectable. I whip away the cloth to reveal a plain cardboard box sitting under the table.

Hisses and ticks of irritation. People murmur about hurrying before the bar closes and I stand

on stage next to a wooden table with a box underneath. Only a few people notice that the box

is rocking by itself; small lumps appear on the otherwise smooth brown surface. I crouch and

place my hand on top of the squirming cardboard.

Metawriter

Who is still at the Detroit car show waiting to see what’s inside the cardboard box

under the table? Many will have declared the entire event to be a gimmick, a marketing ploy,

the intention of which may still be unclear, but their irritation is not. Others have become

engaged in conversation about entirely different topics, some have left and are already on their
 Meta/Jason Bellipanni 8 Old Milford Rd. Mont Vernon, NH 03057 Bellipanni@comcast.net 603-305-5496 11,825 5

way home. The few who remain at the convention center, some of whom are too drunk to

leave, stare at the stage. I crouch down, slide the box out from under the table and open the

top. I reach in and pick up a human head, my head. Someone laughs; a man faints and a

woman gasps. The mouth of the head is moving even as I hold it like a basketball under one

arm. The words coming out sound like this: