The View From The Pit

You have to have a balanced life to have the right perspective on things, W. says. You have to have things in order. What perspective can I possibly have from my flat, which is to say, my pit underground? What valid judgement could I make about the world, given that I spend so much time below pavement level?

I'm always looking up at things, W. says; I have to. I look up to see the plants and the algae in my disgusting yard. I look up to the concrete and the rotting bricks. I barely know the sky exists, W. says – and the sun – when was the last time I saw the sun?

Besides, it's always grey above my flat. It rains ceaselessly, a sick, grey kind of rain, that lets nothing grow. The plants in the yard are dead. Sticks in pots, and algae spreading everywhere, a vile green carpet. Moss. And ever-present concrete, that and the rotting bricks, and who's ever heard of rotting bricks? Concrete and bricks whose surface you can scrape off with a fingernail: that's what the walls of my flat are made of, aren't they?

It's no wonder it's always damp. No surprise that I cough constantly. Even he, W., has a cough, and he's only been visiting for the weekend. No, the flat is not a place from which I can be expected to make any kind of valid judgement. It's set my thoughts askew, permanently askew. I can only have damp thoughts and rotting thoughts. I can only have thoughts that unconsciously look up to what they might have been if they were thought by a strong and vigorous thinker.