"Mise-en-abymes"

"People have wanted to narrate since first we banged rocks together & wondered about fire.  There'll be tellings as long as there are any of us here, until the stars disappear one by one like turned-out lights.

   Some such stories are themselves about the telling of others.  An odd pastime.  Seemingly redundant, or easy to get lost in, like a picture that contains a smaller picture of itself, which in turn contains--& so on.  Such phenomena have a pleasing foreign name: they are mise-en-abymes.

  We have just had a story of a story.  Tell it yourself, again, & story of a story in a story will be born, & you will be en route to that abyme.  Which is an abyss."