“Once upon a time, there was a mole.” This was a misnomer. Was it a misnomer? There would(æï) have been one who saw it as such, one among the many. This One wouldæï have been known only as Miss Nomar, the One!Among!The!Many!, though friends wouldæï have called her Miss Nomah. She wouldæï have felt it her duty to challenge anything that she couldæï have considered an inappropriate use of a label or identification. Havingæï been speaking among the many, she couldæï have explained her disgusted thoughts on the phrase in question. She wouldæï have spake thus:

Once upon a time, there was a mole. ONCE . . . upon a time there was a mole. But was this mole a singular self-contained entity? Can it have been contained within “once;” within a singularity of time? For a mole to have existed, mustn’t it have existed more than once upon a time? I exclaim to you thusly! However, one may well argue that since the time referred to is itself singular (being “a time” rather than simply “time” or “a timespan”) that anything upon that time could only exist once, just as the time itself exists once. I say to you many that herein lies the MISNOMER! You see, there cannot be A time. Time cannot exist in a singular sense, just as a point cannot exist as a distance. Surely, A distance can exist, but only so long as that distance exists implicitly or explicitly within a system of difference within which the specific measurement can be quantified. If one decides that the same can be said of time, then “once” is the misnomer.

Furthermore, “there” denotes a location. It denotes a different location in space from the current location, just as “once” denotes a different location in time from the current location. However, we can perhaps forgive such vagueness, for the phrase “there was” speaks to the mole’s existence as being bound to a situation or environment, which in turn is true of all of us. As we become more inclusive, we are accosted by the full phrase, “there was a mole.” To assume a series of conscious thoughts that have come into being in opposition to an environment, a subsection of the non-reflective being of the so-called situation itself which alone can be grouped into a singular entity; to describe that entity as a singular essence which always cohesively forms a being but which remains essentially separate from the outside to which it is in this manner opposed; and then to give this existence/essence a label by which it can be marginalized; this is the sort of dishonesty which, while it might possibly be necessary if one is to attempt the process of living, and while it cannot even be spoken of without multiplying this same dishonesty a hundredfold because of every word or phrase used to describe it, controls the very process by which we think. You call it a mole, I call it a travesty. And yet both of us err equally in so doing.