What does it mean to say amen?

We say it reflexively. The minister concludes the prayer, and the congregation responds. Amen. So be it. Let it be done. The word carries the weight of assent, of agreement, of complicity in whatever petition has just been offered to the divine.

But what happens when someone refuses to say it?

I want to explore the larger project of what I've been calling Fractional Fiction. Because the two are inseparable. The methodology creates the meaning, and the meaning demands the methodology.

Let me start with a scene.

The Held Land tells three stories across 159 years, all rooted in a single quarter-section of Nebraska prairie. In March 1867, Ezekiel Washington, a Black veteran of the 5th United States Colored Troops, files a homestead claim on 160 acres. He builds a soddie with his own hands, breaks the sod, plants corn, and waits for the land to become his. Five years later, a rigged hearing strips him of everything. He walks off the land he made productive with nothing but his discharge papers and disappears from the historical record.

What makes you countable?

Not valuable. Not worthy. Not loved. Countable. What is it about you that allows a system to place you in a box, assign you a number, and track your existence across time?

We live inside classification systems we did not choose and cannot see. Every form you have ever filled out asked you to sort yourself into categories invented by strangers. Race. Gender. Age. Income. Education. Marital status. Employment. Each checkbox a small act of self-definition performed for an audience that will never know your name.

The systems do not care about you. They care about the categories. You are the instance; the category is the thing. And when the last instance of a category dies, the category closes, and the system moves on without mourning.