Ferociously Religious

We are ferociously religious, says W., quoting Bataille. Are we? Oh yes, W. says, 'especially you. Especially you!' That's why he hangs out with me, W. says, he's sure of it: my immense religious instinct, of which I am unaware.

It's all to do with my intimate relationship with the everyday, W. says. It's to do with my years of unemployment and menial work, W. says.

When he thinks of religion, he immediately thinks of me working in my warehouse, he says. He immediately thinks of me, in the warehouse, with no hope in my life.

Only the hopeless can truly understand the everyday, W. says. Only they can approach the everyday at its level.

Ah, the banality of my life! The banality I've experienced! The despair! 'Your forklift truck training. Your motivational team meetings …' Why didn't someone put me out of my misery? Why didn't I book yourself into a suicide clinic?

He imagines me, he says, like the chimp who is teletransported in The Fly and becomes a singled mass of bones, flesh and fur. Still twitching, says W., still cooking and emiting a little gasping noise. He imagines me as one of the strange figures of Bacon's Three Figures at the Base of the Crucifixion, he says, trussed up, its wings severed, making what he imagines is a subdued whining.

Someone should have battered me to death, W. says. My body should have been sawn into pieces and thrown into the bushes …

Ah, but that was the my encounter with religion, unbeknownst to me, W. says. Religion has to do with the everyday, W. says. Didn't I keep photocopied pictures of the Hindu gods in my cubicle? Weren't they blu-tacked to my filing cabinet and overdesk cupboards? Ah, the pity, the horror, says W. The pity and the horror!