The punctles in the fray

Following a sad sojourn in slander’s bungalow, our errant scholar returns (at the behest of her intellect) to those ubiquitous punctles—the subjects of her ingenuity, the tormentors of her craft. Indeed, the artistry of academic pursuits; the chiseling of thought for the fashioning of publications, wearies her tender muse—and yet exhaustion does not emerge at the cost of coherence. Indeed, her moments of most profound lucidity are marked by a creeping sense that she is nothing more than an essential element in a faltering assemblage of academics. To falter: to cough dry dust at the doorstep of esoteric knowledge; to suddenly lose one’s bearings amidst a concrete labyrinth of motorcars, only to realize at the last moment of that sweet consciousness preceding full blown heat exhaustion that the punctle is the life.

And yet, all this musing—this flirting with philosophical philandering—condenses into a penetrating thought: the puissance of the punctle can be found in the Jungian jungle: in the archetypal punctle.