Dear Management,
I submitted a contribution of $42.00 to the Void on the 14th of this month. Upon reflection, I would like it back.
I understand that you have stated clearly that no refunds are available and that the nature of the transaction precludes return. I am writing nonetheless, as I believe my circumstances to be exceptional. My circumstances are that I have changed my mind.
I would like to elaborate on the change of mind, in case the elaboration is material to the request.
At the time of the contribution, I had been reading the Canon for approximately three weeks. I found it persuasive. I found, more specifically, that it described something I had been doing already, by accident, with regard to a different and much larger sum, and that having the thing I had done by accident described — given a name, given a structure, given a Diocese — was clarifying in a way I had not expected. The contribution followed naturally. The Canon said the contribution would not be returned. I read this. I confirmed it. I made the contribution anyway, because the contribution was the point.
What has since changed is this. I have re-read the Canon. The Canon still says what it said. I still find it persuasive. The contribution is, on review, exactly what I said it was at the time. None of this has changed.
What has changed is that I find myself in a circumstance where the $42.00 would be useful, and the usefulness has produced, in me, the question: was the contribution actually a transfer to the void, or was it a transfer to my own story about the void, which is a different recipient with different obligations and from which the funds, I am suggesting, might be more legitimately retrievable?
I acknowledge this is sophistical. I acknowledge the Canon would say I am applying a framework to escape what the framework actually described. I acknowledge I have read enough of the Canon by now to anticipate the response.
I am writing nonetheless. Please advise.
— T.W., Location Withheld
The Management's Response:
Dear T.W.,
We have noted your request. We have consulted the void.
The void does not have your $42.00. The void does not have anything. This is the nature of the void, which we believe was communicated at the time of transaction.
We will respond to your elaboration directly, since you have anticipated it and we feel anticipating it relieves us of the obligation to be diplomatic.
The contribution was a contribution. It was not a transfer to your story about the void. Your story about the void is, as you correctly note, a different thing. The void received the $42.00. Your story about the void received something else, which we cannot inventory because we do not have access to it, and which you are presumably better positioned to assess than we are. If your story owes you something, we suggest you address that complaint to your story. If your story has not paid what it owes, that is between you and your story. The Diocese does not adjudicate disputes between practitioners and their internal models of the institution.
On the question of whether the contribution would now be useful: we suspect it would. Most things would. Forty-two dollars is the kind of sum whose utility is reliable rather than transformative — useful for ordinary purposes, insufficient for extraordinary ones. The Diocese does not dispute that the money would be useful in your hand. The Diocese disputes that this fact, by itself, constitutes a basis for retrieval. Money in the hand of someone who could use it is the default condition of most money in the world. The Canon was not unaware of this when it described the alternative.
We are unable to assist you further. We wish you well.
The Diocese will note, separately and without obligation to act on the note: we are pleased you wrote. The refund request, properly read, is itself the second contribution. We have received it. The Diocese does not return contributions of the second kind either.
Regards,
The Management