Work – there’s nothing to distract you. Work: but there’s the whole weekend to distract me, hours in which nothing need happen; I’ve no appointments, but for all that time is too full, too present with itself. How is it that I seem to have fallen beneath its passing, that time, now, is only concerned with itself? Unwritten book, unwritten articles – now that unwriting has become active; it is the very work of time as it passes without me.
What’s happened? What’s happening? The new book is unwriting itself; my new chapters are coming apart and the pages are turning backwards as line after line is erased. Who am I to hold on to what it was, this book? Who am I to resist its unravelling? Once upon a time, I wrote; once, there was writing. A long time ago. All of time ago. And now? The unwriting of the book streams above me. It is there, like the clouds that disappear as they ascend, and I am here. But where am I?
In the flat. In the quiet flat. The office is for later; now, the flat. I pass from one room to the other, there, on the other side of the bevelled glass, to the bedroom, and then back here, to the desk that is up against the window, and at the level of most of the yard, which raises itself to the backstreet on the other side of the wall. I should be writing, that’s true enough. Clear and well-structured prose, that’s what’s wanted. And instead?
Work: there’s nothing to distract you. Work – but nothing happens but distraction. All of time moves forward, but not here. Long sunday without monday. Day that cannot complete itself.
Lars Iyer's Blog 