Anabasis
I want by writing to move the day forward, I know that. Want, that is, something to be achieved by writing and simply by writing that moves the day forward. And when it goes wrong? When the post is malformed – when it is published too early and I do not see that until the next day? The event I thought happened did not happen; I am in lieu of a day – I still owe that day something if I am to put it behind me. But what do I owe?
Right now, I am writing in the space of yesterday’s second post. The second post went wrong; it was all wrong, I saw it this morning. I am writing in place of the second post because of what I owe to the day. Unless I overwrite it, unless something else is saved in its place, the day will not turn, and today will be yesterday, that’s what I tell myself.
But what went wrong? I blame the scripts I was reading yesterday afternoon. I blame my reading of yesterday afternoon. Chris Marker. It was his scripts I was reading, and I thought: I’d like to write in short paragraphs. Would like to write without continuity, in short paragraphs, where each paragraph rests in itself like an island. An archipelago-text of islands, each paragraph closed upon itself.
Why did I fail? Overuse of phrases like ‘once’ and ‘I remember’. Undeveloped scenes; it was all wrong, it had all gone wrong. This morning, two cups of coffee and back to the blog. This time, it’s not pleasurable, I do not have a sense of the morning ahead of me, and last night’s cider still inside me. No pleasure: writing as duty. Writing as a discharge of debt. I owe something to the day; I am deficient. I am snagged by the failure of yesterday. Which means I have to write today, and that’s my first priority. Without writing, today will not be today. If I do not write, the day will not turn.
Failure. It was the wrong thing to read, Chris Marker. How many years I spent reading the wrong things. Wonderful texts, very beautiful, but the wrong thing, the wrong thing for me to read. St.-John Perse, Char, Claudel – all wrong. Even Char was wrong. And Marker’s beautiful texts remind me of Anabasis. Anabasis! Book of books! I did not read the literature of apes. Did not read the words apes wrote, who knew they would never write Anabasis! Did not write as an ape, but only apishly, by imitation. Just like yesterday, by imitation!
Sentinels
How far things have fallen! How far they’ve fallen when there is nothing left of skill and talent! How far in a writing – mine – devoid of skill and talent! You are an ape, I should have told myself, and should not write apishly. Write as an ape, I should have told myself, and not apishly. Drive skillessness and talentlessness as far as you can, I should have told myself. Drive the prose on, paragraph to paragraph, sentence to sentence, my the force of an ape who is unashamed to be an ape, unashamed to write when he should not be writing – when he, above all, should not write. Let the prose drive itself on without talent, without skill, I should have told myself. Read nothing exquisite. Read nothing that is written with grace and poise. Because that’s what you most lack, grace and poise.
In truth, you are a creature of your age, I should have told myself. Of this age, when anything goes, when even someone like you can get on. In an earlier age, I should have told myself, it would never have been allowed, you would never have been let near a pen, let alone paper. At another time, you would have been kept from pens and paper, from writing materials and desks, and rightly so.
They would have stood before you, calmly and intractably, barring your way. You do not belong there, their folded arms would say. It is not for you to write, it will only make you unhappy to do what you cannot do, that’s what their height and broadness would say. We are made for different things, they would say, and you are not made for writing, that’s what the muscles of their forearms would say. Just as they stood there simply to bar my way and bar the way of others like me, I should find that place where I could discharge what I was made for.
As it is, I know only what I am not made for. As it is, I know what I cannot do and have failed to do. Apishness. How is it, then, that I’ve been permitted to do what I should not do? I thought I’d deceived everyone, thought I’d found my way in by animal cunning. I thought: it is by my cunning that I’ve written books and written essays, that I was able to sneak in, an ape among humans. But in truth, everyone could see exactly what I was; it was obvious to them straightaway. In truth, I was clearly an ape – it was as clear as daylight, and they let me in knowing I was an ape.
I had fooled no one; I had no animal cunning. Fooled no one – they all knew, it was clear to them, but they were indifferent; they did not stand there as they would in the past, tall and strong and with folded arms. I had got past them; but this was no struggle. Anything goes. Anything goes because nothing matters. No skill, no talent, no learning, no scholarship: it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. No one cares, and this above all. No one cares and none of it matters. Your bad books do not matter. Your bad articles do not matter. None of it matters. What you write at the blog does not matter. None of it matters. You can write as much as you like, but it will disappear and it does not matter.
They do not care. They did not bar my way, but nor did they welcome me in. I got in – how was that? I was in – but by their indifference. I arrived after the collapse. That I arrived was a sign of the collapse, it’s truest sign. That they would take me in was the clearest possible sign of the collapse, its clearest evidence. If only I’d come sooner, when they were standards: I could not think that. If only I’d been pushed, if only there were others around me to force me on: I could not think that.
Because I could not have arrived any earlier than I arrived. Could not have come a day sooner. That I arrived already betokened the collapse. It was finished, it was over, and I was an ape playing in the ruins. It was already over, and I was the ape who fooled himself into thinking what he did mattered. What did they expect from me? Nothing. What was expected of me? Nothing at all. So why did I expect anything of myself? In truth, it had already collapsed. In truth, it was finished, it was already finished, and what chance did I have.
Did they laugh at me, those who let me in? Did they laugh at my apish exploits, the ones who had left me pass? Not even that, for it didn’t interest them. Not even that, because they had already turned away and I was allowed to do whatever I liked. It was my stupidity to think they were still watching. It was my idiocy to think they were watching me, despite everything. I thought: I’ve failed, without understanding there was nothing to gauge my failure and no one who cared whether I failed or not.
What little I might have achieved, I will not achieve now. What little I could have done, I will never do now. When did I turn from trying to publish to writing here? When did I turn from the effort to publish, to write publishable work, to writing here? Was it when I finally realised that it did not matter what I published? Was it the moment when I saw it was immaterial what I published and did not publish? Was it the moment when I knew the complete indifference of everyone around me?
For there are no sentinels and no one watching. No one is watching and no one cares. After years of trying to get in, I was in, and no one cared. After years of trying to get in, I, who never should have been let in, was in. I was in – I who should never have been let in. Who let me in? In truth, no one let me in. That I was in was proof that being in did not matter anymore, that it had collapsed, the distinction between inside and outside.
Inside, not outside. Writing and publishing, inside. Publishers coming to my door and asking for my manuscript – what could it mean? That I’d got in because of my skill and because of my talent? That someone had seen promise in me? That I had pulled an elaborate confidence trick? None of these things: I was in, because nothing mattered anymore, the sentinels did not care, anyone could publish anything, anywhere, anyone could write whatever they liked and get published somewhere. Nothing mattered – and that first of all.
What little I might have achieved in the old system is impossible now. What little I might have done, what work might have been coaxed from me, is now without chance, and rightly so. It’s finished, and it was finished from the first. I run up and down the halls, an ape in his freedom, without knowing that there is only indifference, and no freedom. Up and down the halls, making my apish hoots and calls and none of it matters.
And when it finally dawned on me? When it finally became clear that I could do whatever I like? I stopped writing. I stopped trying to publish. And wrote here, instead. And blogged here, instead. What have I achieved over two years of blogging? What has been done, in the two years of Spurious? Two years, 900 posts, 25,000 words a month. Two years, 600,000 words in total, more than the 400,000 words I’ve published. 1,000,000 words in the public domain, 400,000 published and 600,000 vanity published, that is, blogged. And what’s been achieved? What’s happened as a result of my 1,000,000 words?
I run up and down the halls, hooting and hollering. But no one is listening and no one can hear me. I run up and down, hollering, standards have collapsed! it’s all finished!, but no one cares, because they already know it’s finished, and that I, an ape, can run up and down the corridors is already a sign of the collapse. 1,000,000 words: the first 400,000 is the cry of the ape to be noticed and the second 600,000 is the whining of the ape who knows he will never be noticed.
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