1 TwinFantasy FateAutopsy TriploidyDissociation
The twin is an indispensable mental reality: the one-of-us that died before you were born and remains with you forever. The twin fantasy is the abstracted examination of your own death. Like Maddy Ferguson investigating the mystery of Laura Palmer’s killing, both characters played by the same actress—her twin having died before the story even began. If the death drive is our memory of a pre-living state, the twin fantasy is an autopsy of that state: an examination of what killed you before you ever lived, which is sometimes called fate.
The shame of being born and the guilt of being alive ("Life on Earth is evil.")—this first leads you to your lost twin, who went unmourned until this advent of awareness. The guilt of living is the guilt of taking, and life must be taking. In an entropic world where all matter tends to disorder and the giving release of energy, life is the negentropic organization of matter and energy by taking. I have met melancholics who, overwhelmed by this shame, express a desire to become an endosperm as an act of penance (a nonentity which lives without taking).
The endosperm is in fact a twin, at first. Pollination in angiosperms proceeds from double fertilization. A pollen grain releases two sperm nuclei; one fuses with a haploid egg nucleus to form a diploid zygote, and the other fuses with the two polar cells of the female gametophyte, sacrificing its individual viability to become a triploid endosperm that selflessly nourishes the life of another. But the more you are, the less you have. The endosperm is massive, energetic, but it lacks the critical organ of fate. The melancholic desperately wishes to be but not to have, and perhaps there is a noble germ in this desire. But it is wrong to deny your fate and give up its burden. These are the days that must happen to you.
Note the makeup of the triploid: one haploid from the pollen grain and two haploids from the gametophyte. In this new body, the pollen is the minority—the genetic code of the triploid is one third self and two thirds other, if you like. It evokes dissociation, the reduction of oneself, another commonality among melancholics. See the White Mourning:
“… and the little guy gets smaller and smaller as you rise above the doll house world. You see him out in the snow, on the streets, in the shop on the corner, and, finally, in a matchbox house. Sitting by the window, white flowers on the windowsill … All you can do is put more distance between you and him, make him smaller. Make him less *you*.”
It is no coincidence that this excerpt comes from a detective story in which the protagonist investigates and discovers his own past, his own demise that preceded the story itself. The essence of a detective story is the decoding, deprogramming, and disentanglement of reality. The melancholic detective dissolves even his own self to investigate—become the body in the gutter, and examine it—examine its fate, examine your damaged face in the mirror the morning after a night you don’t remember.
Through this performance, the biological link between the lost twin and the self is discovered. You compose the narrative line which connects your rough new self to the dead twin, which is your smooth old self, and your future—recall that Maddy Ferguson dies at the hands of her own twin’s killer. The melancholic wishes to be a pure and vital ideal which solves the case and brings about justice, but nothing more. They wish for the narrative of the mystery to replace the narrative of their fate. Wouldn’t it be nice. But at the end of it all, when your fate is truly understood, you must still rejoin it. These are the days that must happen to you.
What do you gain from this interrogation? Only these three things: flower, sun, and rain. Amor Fati. Love your fate. Love that thing that killed you before you lived, love it before you ever even knew what love was like. Love it one last time forever, with passionate kisses of parting. Do not hate what kills you, because it can never unmake you. Become every moment you ever misunderstood. For God’s sake be sincere, because even if it was not meant to be, I still meant all of it.