Read the following passage:

Jenny is eleven years old. She lives on a farm in Luxembourg, West Virginia. Today Jenny is collecting eggs from the henhouse. It is 10 a.m. She walks slowly down the rows of cages, feeling around carefully for eggs tucked beneath clucking hens. She finds the first egg in number 6. When she holds it to the light she sees it is the deep tan of boot leather, an old oil-rubbed cowboy boot, creased with microscopic branching lines, catching the light at the swelling above the scarred dusty heel, curled at the cuff, bending and creaking as the foot of the cowboy squirms to rediscover its fit, a leathery thumb and index prying at the scruff, the heel stomping the floor. Victor the hotel manager swings open the door and gives Cowboy a faint smile.

"Take care of yourself, dirt." And he is gone, as they are all gone.

Cowboy stands, almost hitting his head on the overhead light. He is again surprised by his own height, again reminded he is taller than he realizes. He is mildly dizzy, a subtle oscillation of the floor and walls. Suddenly across the room he spots his own face staring back from warped and dusty oblong mirror above the wash basin. His face looks empty, all the light drawn out of it, the lines tired, like slackened cables beneath the skin. He pulls on a jacket and a scratchy but warm poncho and takes a little silver folding blade from a back pocket and tucks it into the crook in his boot. He pulls a string on the overhead bulb and the room is sunk into partial darkness. He patiently waits until he hears Lor's pebble tick against the window. He counts to thirty and then quickly descends the back stairs to the street.

Questions:

1. Who exists in metaphor? Who in pataphor? Who in reality?
3. What is the meaning of the line: "And he is gone, as they are all gone?"
4. Is Cowboy a figment of Jenny's imagination or something else? If not, what else?
5. What is the relationship of reality to metaphor in general? Of reality to pataphor?
6. Who was Lor and why did Cowboy count to thirty?
7. Is it possible for a man to die but live on in metaphor? To die in metaphor but remain alive in reality? To die in pataphor but live on in metaphor? To get sick in reality, die in metaphor and in pataphor remain in perfect health?
8. What is the second question of this test?

I am so happy to be here, before this wide, smiling audience, delivering this farewell speech. Over the years it is as if we have become one. All of your eyes have been reflected in mine: likewise, mine in yours. How can we part and yet remain whole?

It is a beautiful day. The flags over our heads are all wagging and twitching like the tails of excited dogs, I see. Though it is only the action of molecules on molecules I am tempted to invest it with some deeper significance; I am tempted to explore the universe that accompanies the metaphor. I must image the dogs, Elmo and Hutch: Elmo with the bad temper and drooping ear; Hutch with the bad itch that never seems to go away. I wonder about the owners and the hazy world they inhabit beyond the metaphor, beyond the blur of words.

Sad thoughts will occur to us at a time like this. Thoughts of those who have been with us and are gone; also, peculiarly enough, of those who have never been here at all. That we are here, have been here, is a cause of exultation to my heart. (The left ventricle, in particular, clicks with joy.) I fear, however, for those living in the pataphorical universe. They press their hands against the fogged windows of an imaginary school bus — a school bus that will never reach its destination, a window that will never be defogged — attempting for an eternity to peer through to where we sit today, smiling. Their effort is in vain. They, like we, can never see through the fog, the mist, the veil of language. What are we to make of this? Is the pataphorical universe real? And if so, how real? What are we to make of the lost souls there?

My advice to you today, as I deliver my goodbye, is to live. Do not speculate too earnestly about the universe of the possible. It takes an infinity of forms and leads nowhere. Be concerned instead with the reality of yourselves. Improve your minds and hearts. Leave the world alone and it will take of itself and you. Consider the lilies, not the bees that brush against their nodding heads.

We have had a spectacular time together. Be consoled that after I am gone I will remain with you, and you with me. Nothing can separate us because we have never been apart at all.

And so one last time, my friends: Thank you, thank you, thank you.

My pataphorical grandmother is calling to me across a chasm, an unbreachable chasm of words. Sometimes it seems like she can never reach me. Naturally, she loves me and I love her. But we never really seem to connect.

To make matters worse, though we are related, her daughter is not my mother. My mother exists in reality. My pataphorical grandmother does not have a daughter, because I have not bothered to imagine one. The daughter would be metaphorical -- or perhaps pataphorical, like grandmother. The point is moot: there will never be a daughter. And yet my pataphorical grandmother continues to exist, just the same.

The truth is, we have chosen each other. She has chosen me, I like to imagine, because she loves me. I have chosen her because I have chosen certain words.

My pataphorical grandmother gives me the gift of a lollipop and a toy bear. A rubber ball and a satin pillowcase.

And in turn I keep her around -- through the words I choose.

In every piece of writing there comes a point at which the revision process ends. This is when words have stopped being simply words -- nouns and verbs and prepositions on a page -- and have become instead machine parts. Then, to change anything at all is to make it ring five o' clock at every hour, or worse, let its sweet face linger on the watchmaker's counter, peering through a dusty screen, like the child who rubs off the window frost to see the empty blacktop packed with snow.

That's not how it happened. Not for a reason. Not for a purpose. Not to perform a function. Not to fulfill a requirement. Not to please someone. Not to effect something. Not to tell someone something. Not to suggest changes. Not to be a mystical, mysterious or symbolic sign. Not to matter. Not to be.

Why did it happen? Because it was inevitable. Because of contingency. Because of synchrony. Because of the structure of the universe. Because it did.

Ambiguity is the binding steel of the universe. I loved you and you loved me for who knows what reasons. I have left you and you me because I have left you and you me.

The soul is a lie. I loved you because I had to.

String theory may be said to be a kind of mathematical pataphor, insofar as it is 'supposition based on supposition'. In other words, as string theory is speculation based on ideas that are themselves speculative (in this instance, theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics), string theory is not in fact physics, but 'pataphysics.

We have to remember that 'pataphysics, in essence, describes a degree of separation from reality. So, for example, if we see someone we know on the street and believe they are ignoring us (even if it is not true), and then begin to imagine a reason they are doing so, we are essentially thinking pataphorically. So pataphors (and 'pataphysics) may also be said to describe the world of our fears, mistaken assumptions and belief systems run amok. They are worlds built of assumptions based on assumptions.