Wexburg, Where We Are, Is It a Town, or Something More? A Place, or Our Condition? Is It Infinite, or Just Itself? Its Boundaries Spread, All our Knowledge Is Spent Here. We’re Saturated in It, Up to Our Very Ignorance.

The town of Wexburg is peculiar. Especially in this “day and age.” Its inhabitants are deprived culturally by having never been to a movie, a sporting event, an art gallery, a music concert, or even just a simple old party. There’s no library in Wexburg. The latter is located virtually due west. But of what? Land Surveyors are there, and their chart will tell. Wexburg is also east of something. (There’s always something to be east of, whether you’re a town or only a person. It’s merely a question of “what.”)

There are ridges, mountains, hills, dales, valleys, oceans, lakes, rivulets, streams, waterfalls, copses, forests, plains, even a desert, in, around, or surrounding Wexburg itself, and its nearby environs, that take place along the fringes of its vicinity. That should set the scene. Geography is the least abstract of sciences.

At times, Wexburg seems to be a thriving industrial community, with mills and so forth. But only at times, mind you.

Then, of course, there are other times, when Wexburg is simply an agricultural community, including the weather and, eventually, crops. The appropriate farm animals are there, in coops, barnyards, or grazing pastures. No diagram is necessary, here. Livestock competition takes second fiddle, as it were, to the harvest, if there is one. Sleepy, rustic little Wexburg. No map should be complete without it.

As for Wexburg itself, that’s another story. Its archives may be browsed through at the Town Hall, preserving many historical documents in the church ledgers that tell of pedigrees in birth and death, as well as amounts of contributions to the collection box when passed around, aisle by aisle. Wexburg is proudly proud of its past, though it has everything in the world to be modest about. Its modesty is just a front. But there’s nothing behind it.

Wexburg, however, is more than just a town. It’s really each and every living person in it. What is a town, anyway? Just the sum (or sum “total”) of its people, called inhabitants. They include ail citizens registered to vote, including the very exceptions to this rule.

What rule? That of the mayor and board of aldermen. As legislatures go, there isn’t much to go on. Still, “democracy in action” can be seen at work here. Judicially, there’s a court of law. And an active police force, just in case.

The main exports and imports of this little municipality are open for negotiation, by the Commercial Chamber, operated by elders. Thus, this thriving little community even doubles as a tourist Mecca, when in due season. Special restaurants are wheeled out, to serve any visiting foreign stranger from across the neighboring borders. The welcome mat is perennially out; though if you walk barefoot on its straw, you get souvenir splinters. But that’s usually beneath the dignitaries thus caught, as it were, barefooted. Yelpingly, they brace themselves and stand it. It’s no uncommon feet, when they do.

But about Wexburg proper: what’s its official spirit? It’s too internal, or intangible, to tell, if only truth be known. Who, in words (or what artist, in paint), can capture the true spirit of any one place? First you have to go to the heart of its essence. That brings you to its nature. By then, where is Wexburg, itself? or rather, what? Yes, that begs the question. But the question is rude to beggars. They just go begging.

Let’s leave, then, little Wexburg. Some day (but not too soon), we’ll pay it another gentle little visit. As we leave, it turns sunset, in a rosy setting, where the western horizon (it has one, with a boastable view) kissingly joins the cloudy vapors from above. Goodbye, little Wexburg. You’re the sum, total of your inhabitants. But of, as well, your transient tourists who pass your way. Of which I’m one, as I sadly leave.

Now, I’m back home. I have “Wexburg-in-the-mind.” There it dwells. It’s my imaginary city, even a nation by now: for it grows, every time I think of it.

One day, it will become the whole world. The world will be retitled: “Wexburg.” Instead of Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Earth, there will be Venus, Mars, Jupiter—and Wexburg! This is the foresightly vision of the city planners: a planet, as they plan it. “My, how your town doth grow!” will be said by envious neighboring villages, as they get swallowed up in the ruthless expansion of that imperialistic tribe: absorbing and consuming whole national chunks, in its plundering path. Wexburg had to start somewhere: and it did. But when will it ever finish?

Actually, Wexburg seems unreal. But is it really? Only time will tell. Unreality is a contradiction in terms. What’s unreal only seems so. But what is so? Reality is so. By this process, therefore, Wexburg is as absolutely real as even only reality can only be. Reality is too real even to be believed! Therefore, it’s incredible.

In the far distance is incredible little Wexburg. It’s all there, surrounded by a mist. It’s even included in the mist, and it surrounds the mist. Thus, it’s shrouded in mistery.

The mist it surrounds is that of outer space. It’s a Wexburg universe now: the sphere of the near and here. What’s outside of Wexburg? The interstellar aeons of space: transgressable by astronauts alone. Thus, real estate is skyrocketing, in friendly little Wexburg. You’re in it now. You can’t get out of it. It’s flourished to all extensions, including, even, where you are now, sitting and reading this. You’re a Wexburgian, that’s what you are. Your tax form will indicate as much, and other official documenteria and other such certificates that neatly fit into your very wallet or handbag. Go investigate, and see.

But it’s different than before, Wexburg has plenty of movies, sporting events, art galleries, music concerts, plenty of parties, libraries, cultures of all description: we’re not deprived. The world has grown about us. History has joined with geography. It’s sort of “a global village”—Wexburg by name. It colors us. We live in this atmosphere. It’s our choice, responsibility, our legacy, what was given, what we can’t help.

I came into this world, Wexburg was indistinct. Now look at it! It’s one Wexburgian world. We’re all stamped by it, branded as people. We crawl about. We live within these confines, and don’t dare leave, for here there’s air and food. We’re in this culture. It’s our condition. It’s us. All the many parts of “we”—you and I. All here, in one “burg.” Not so provincial. Nor provincial in the opposite direction, “cosmopolitan.” We’re not in any metropolis. We’re in the beyond of all that. We’re in Metaphysicsville, but not in any abstract sense. Concretely, it’s Wexburg. Beyond its borders, dwells some future realm: as yet, uninhabitable, save to prophets. Some day, there’ll be no Wexburg. But that’s far off. It needn’t now concern us. Let’s attend to our daily needs and living, and cultivate modern taste. In dear, sophisticated old Wexburg. Passing sweetly off, by slow gradation, into the mauve tints of nostalgia.

But let’s not anticipate. Nostalgia is our later version of Wexburg. Here’s our heaven-scented purgatory, sardonically smacking of the infernal. It’s our earthly trial, to be here. It’s the only Wexburg we have—if we value life and limb. To this limbo, we’re limited.

The universe is the supreme fiction—reality incarnate. I have but one life to spend. Now it’s in Wexburg. But what will incarnation bring, in my case? Wexburg in an advanced phase?—dangling onto the decadent era? Or a transformation, and a total non-Wexburg?—conceivable only in old Wexburgian terms. Our very terms of understanding go now by Wexburgian scale, being, as we are, sense-saturated to the Wexburgian matter, mentalized. Is there anything else but this? We know by our knowing terms—including the gaps of ignorance caught in the same scale-nets. I’m only here. This is my time. It’s just me, here. By miracle, it’s Wexburg.