Begin with the yard, end with the yard. Nothing to write? Write about the yard, open the curtains, there it is: the yard, as disappointing as ever, as mediocre as ever, but still there, still the yard enclosed by three walls and the back of the flat – still there, with the white sky above it and the wheelie bins in it, there with the rotting plants and the grime on the concrete and the algae on the concrete.
Write about the yard. Write about what is absolute about this yard, which sets it apart from other yards. The yard: nothing happens here. It’s the same, always the same. The same yard, the same enclosed space where nothing happens. Doubling that nothing is happening I carry in my heart, that nothing happens that is my hollowness. What has my life amounted to? Nothing. Where is it going? Nowhere. Nothing in particular, that’s what I call the yard. Nowhere in particular. Space enclosed by three walls and the back of the flat below (mine) and the flat above (the students’).
Nothing happens here. No one goes out in the yard, except to take the bin into the street. No one sits on the bench in the yard. Occasionally, cigarette butts are flicked from upstairs onto the surface of the yard, but that’s all. Once a workman came over the wall of the yard via his ladder. Up from the back street and then down into the yard. He was here to fix the pipe, upstairs’s pipe, which was leaking into my kitchen. Soil water soaking through the walls of my kitchen, mould up and down the wall, disgusting. And still the wound where he pulled the pipe from the wall, that workman.
Sometimes a magpie in the yard pecking at the binbags when the bin lid is up. Otherwise nothing. Once or twice a blackbird poking around the drain. Looking for what? Only slugs here, slugs who find their way into the kitchen how I cannot discover. Looking for what? There’s nothing here. That’s why I’ve only seen them twice, the blackbirds, or is it a single blackbird that has visited twice. I keep the bin lid closed now, so no magpies. Blue slug pellets along the edge of the kitchen door. No slugs have come in recently, but I can’t see any dried up slug bodies by the door, either. Perhaps they turned back because of the slug pellets.
Nothing happens in the yard. Nothing is happening there. Vacancy within me where nothing happens. Event endured by no one: within me. Event, opening, where no one is present. What’s happened? Nothing. What is happening? Nothing in particular. Returning, that nothing in particular. Coming back, wearing out time. Returning – the non-happening that divides time from itself. An event? Rather a non-event. What does not happen, and keeps not happening.
It never began; nothing began here, nothing will end here, there’s nothing to end. The non-event cannot be brought to term. Nothing happened, nothing is happening, just the return of this nothing is happening. What happens? Nothing. What is happening? Nothing. The yard, open between three walls and the back of the house to nothing in particular. It’s my soul, I tell myself, that opening to what does not happen, to the non-actual. My soul, which is the return of the nothing-is-happening.
Today you are in idiot, says the day, and tomorrow you will also be an idiot. Today: idiocy and tomorrow, more idiocy. You are the yard, says the day, open and blank. Nothing is happening, says the day. Lie down, says the day, give up. We’re all disgusted with you, says the day, and above all, you should be disgusted with yourself. Lie down, says the day, and be ill. Admit it: you’re ill. Everyone’s ill, but you are iller than everyone. Ill. Lie down and be ill, says the day, I’ve won, you’ve lost, you’re finished and I’ve just begun as I’ve always just begun.
Between three walls and the back of the house that has been divided into two flats, one above and one below there is the yard. Nothing happens there. Everything is finished there. Every morning, the day dawns above the yard, the day comes, but nothing happens. The day highlights only the nothing is happening. The plants are dying, the concrete is streaked with green, nothing is happening, nothing is reducing everything to itself, to the same level. Mediocrity and disappointment, that’s what is shown by the way. Detritus: a brick, some rocks, some dying plants, the wheelie bin: nothing in particular.
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