Category: Failure

Regret, but not for what happened. Regret for what didn't happen, what failed to happen. A whole life could have been lived here. A whole life, opening out of itself like a universe (opening as a universe is said by cosmologists to open from a foam of popping bubbles). You are a placeholder for what might have happened. Your place marks the failure, the non-beginning of things.

I failed … No, it failed. Nothing happened here. Nothing could happen. And your place is to watch over that nothing is happening, to remember it and reflect it back into every other instant. You will watch over what fails to happen in everything that happens.

But then the sense that this watching is undertaken by someone else, further back in me. That everyone bears a watcher of this kind, one who regrets and who watches over regret.

Who are you? A way in which failure thickens and lives itself. Who are you?

Overwritten, overwrought, a prose grown too thick with itself, that is no longer quick, no longer speaks with assurance. An old prose, Byzantine, wandering abandoned corridors, lost in some inward dream. A deserted palace covered in jungle. The last missionaries in a plague-stricken outpost. Soldiers who have forgotten their orders and all orders. The army who do not know that the war is over. All this, I think, is what refuses to die in the prose I would like to write and that I would like to read.

What decadence! What Alexandrianism! And everyone can tell but me. Everyone can see it, and only I cannot, lost in some ox-bow lake, cut off from the onrush of cultural forms. I am old Europe lost in itself. Old lost Europe that has forgotten its culture and all culture and whose dreams without depth are projected onto the blank screen against which I write here.

And it is only for that reason you can write, that you are allowed to write, I tell myself: because nothing you write is of any consequence. Because writing here is itself delirium, the dream of a culture already dead; fetid air, and soon the doors will be opened, soon the new will come along and sweep you away with what remains of the old culture.

And in the meantime?, I ask myself. In the meantime, a private writing, a writing to yourself, to reach yourself – but that, too, is impossible, on the last shore of old Europe, like the poor Neanderthals who died on Gibraltar, the last ones, facing West, facing that as yet undreamt of America …

To reach yourself – but you were never anything, there was nothing there. A kind of kink in the history of Europe. An ox-bow lake going stagnant in the sun. Nothing finds itself in you. As though you were the dream of another, insubstantial. As you were only the circuit through which something else passed, a message, clear to everyone but you: old Europe is dead, old culture is dead, Literature is dead, even literature that proclaims its death, and a bright new morning is gathering itself to begin – a white new star to regenerate the swollen red giant of the old sun.

From now on, sentences will be swift and sure. Tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, there will no great authors, no books. Writing will stream along like a shoal of silver fish, owned by no one, moving in unknown directions.

Everything appalls me, I think. The whole lot, it’s terrible, I think. That it can even continue, I think. That one moment can succeed another, I think, and inwardly shake my head. The temerity. When there’s no reason in this succession. Just a horrible lurching forward, I think. Because away somewhere it’s all already dead, I think.

Somewhere away from here, death’s already one, it’s all dead, it’s all over. Only here – somehow – it’s still not known, that everything’s dead. Still not quite known, still not quite figured out – but it’s dead, all dead, there’s nothing to begin, and nothing even to end. Just nothing – and not even that. No relief. The absence of nothing, that’s it. The very fact of continuance, that’s it.

Of time, I think. Of that eternal optimism. Of the minute that succeeds the minute. The ticking forward. It’s a disgrace, I think. It’s all dead, I think, all already, and a long time ago. Somehow it hasn’t reached here, that it’s all dead. Somehow, no one’s heard, and life’s continuing. It’s miraculous, I think. It’s all dead, and there are still minutes, and hours, and all that. Time moving on. The moving on moving on – it’s a disgrace, really. It’s baffling.

I’m hungry, I think. I should boil some water, I think. And isn’t it incredible, just that: hunger. Just that: the stove, and a pan, and a flame, and water. And heating up. Hunger’s optimistic, I think. Hunger ranges ahead of you, I think. Thank God for it, hunger, I think. It joins up minute to minute, I think. And that’s all you need really, I think. Some forward movement.

I’m going to boil some water. Put some rice in the pan. Yes, that’s what I’m going to do. Because I’m hungry. And that’s what’s getting me from minute to minute. Time’s pulled taught again. Time’s moving forward again, minute to minute.

Summer’s arrived, but it’s too bright, there’s too much light. I spent the day in the office and now I’m home. And as I thought this morning, I should mark this day. There’s something I want to say. But too many false starts. Can’t get there – to what I want to say. And I think to myself instead: I’m going to have to sit this one out.

To sit it out – how many hours before bedtime? And this bottle of wine nearly gone. How many hours? Ah, I feel dazed, tired. I felt tired this morning, so I had to take myself off. I went to the office; worked. Thought: I might as well do something, even if I’m tired. And there’s no temptations in the office. Nothing to keep me from work.

But now I’m home. You have to come home in the end. And to me, home means: another kind of work, or time preparatory to work. Because there’s only work. You have to go forward in some way, I tell myself. To take some kind of step, all of you, I tell myself. And I opened a bottle of wine – and drank.

I have my Jandek albums here, that is my good fortune. All of them in a row on my gas heater – what happiness. And I can mark each day by listening to another album, I’m saving them up. Happiness: Jandek’s black on black, his brown on brown. The grey on grey of his music. Painting with few, few colours. And yet those colours are enough.

What matters is to go on, to continue. To work, blessed work. To double up despair, to give it shape. To give it a body – and isn’t that a kind of joy? To make – isn’t that joy? To rise from despair just enough to – sing? To – play? Isn’t that joy enough, the exultance of your powers. Your unexpected powers, even there, close to despair. Even close to the end, still powers. What glory, to be able to make. To play – to sing. What a surprise, to be capable of that.

And I’m home. The flat around me like a cloak. empty space. The washing machine and kitchen furniture in the lounge, stranded. The microwave covered over with a blanket. And green bananas on top of them. And grapes cooling in the fridge. And Jandek. First, The End of it All, and then – a favourite – A Kingdom He Likes. Ah, Jandek. Jandek to get through these difficult hours, these threshold hours that I’ve never liked. That separate afternoon from evening.

Didn’t I have something to say? Wasn’t there something? It came to me last night. Last night, I thought: that’s it. The thought seemed hollow. It had hollowed itself out. I thought: it’s like a sculpture, that thought. I was happy, because I was capable of thinking it. It just fell into me, that thought. But I was ready, somehow. Somehow I was primed, ready. I was waiting. In the flat, the silent flat, where the mirror on the open door of the medicine cabinet shows me unexpectedly as I go up the hallway. I see myself – unexpectedly. Someone is here; that’s my body. Ah – I am here. But am I here?

But I had something to say. I thought: that’s something at least. And waited. Because it wasn’t time to write, not then. I hadn’t the energy. The propensity. No point beginning. Save it for the morning, I thought. Save it for early on, rise early, and write it out. Try to find it, by writing. Try to approach it in the right idiom. Find the right idiom, and then approach it.

But when I woke – nothing. When I woke – a new tiredness, a tiredness within tiredness. Hadn’t I made it until six thirty? Hadn’t I slept all the way to six thirty? Wasn’t I rested enough? Wasn’t it bright enough, already, outside, in the summer sun? Wasn’t it bright enough in this indecent summer that spreads light everywhere, everywhere, and knows no secrets?

But there was nothing when I woke. I woke like a corpse. I woke up, and lay there, appalled like a corpse. Thought: is this it? is this waking up? Is this the morning? Is this what I’ve woken into? Light everywhere? The indecency of light, showing everything? Waiting for me? Light as though it had always been light? Light since the day of creation?

I wanted to slip back behind it. Wanted to reach behind the dawn, to accompany it. To know that at least there was darkness. Darkness – what happened to that? Night – where’s night gone? Because it’s too bright. I’m home from work, from the office, and it’s too damn bright. There’s no secrets.

No need for a table light. No cone of light in which to write. And the curtains, really, have to be open. And the whole flat exposed. To no one in particular – who’s interested? – but still open. As though it were undone. As though the walls were made of glass. You can see in, and see out. That’s the tyranny of light. Sight reaches everywhere. No secrets, no walls. Everywhere can be seen.

What happened to my thought? Where is it? But I’m not worthy of it now. Sit this one out, I told myself. Sit out this day, I thought this morning. Just as I thought last night: sit this one out. Wait, I thought. You’ll have energy tomorrow, I thought. Energy on rising, I thought.

But as I woke I thought: there’s no energy here. None in these limbs and this body. There’s nothing going on here, I thought. Another day to sit out, I thought. Another day in lieu of – work. Of real work, essential work. Of the going forward. Or of the illusion of going forward. Of the illusion of beginning, I thought. When in fact there were never any beginnings, I thought. And no work, I thought. And no thought, not even the beginnings of that. No thought.

I’m woozy now. I’m half drunkenly stubborn. I’ll stagger on in writing regardless, I think to myself. Stagger on, I think. Go on. Think, I think. Go on, I think. For laughs, I think. For your own amusement, I think. For the amusement of no one, I think. No one but you, I think. But at least I find it funny, I think. At least it amuses me, I think. As I type. And type very quickly as I always do, I think.

But what of my thought? What of it – my thought, that thought which came to me? Perhaps it isn’t really mine. Perhaps it just fell like an angel, and isn’t mine. But it’s there inside me. It’s there, I know its presence. I should write about it. Should write it out. But I can’t quite do it. I’m not quite up it. This idiom – isn’t right. You have to find the idiom, and this one isn’t right somehow, there’s nothing it can welcome, I think.

It isn’t capable of that, of welcoming, I think. It can’t play the host, I think. So I’ll have to sit this one out, I think. Sit it out and wait, and maybe everything will be different tomorrow, I think. Maybe everything will be different tomorrow and beginnings will bloom and thoughts will fly and fingers rush over the keyboard, I think. You’ll have to sit this one out, I think.

6.00 PM, I’ve opened a bottle of wine; I think that’s acceptable. 6.00, and the long sag of the afternoon over. And what am I to write? What should I gather here? Have I learned something today? Have I wisdom to transmit? The afternoon sagged – it was too long. I spent it in my office with the dirty windows. I edited and wrote. The day passed.

And I looked up, and thought: I’d like to write, but elsewhere, not here. To write, and not a review, or an essay. To write and if only to remind myself I can write, that would be enough. To make a mark on the day, to write I was here on its walls. Here and capable of writing. Here and writing was possible, and there was writing, and I can let it roam ahead of me.

A bottle of wine. I brought back some books from the office. X, a hardback. Y., a paperback. And here beside me, to be read. Only I can’t read, not now. Can’t stomach it. First of all, to make a mark. To divide the day somehow. To break afternoon from evening; the lag in time from time regained. To regain time – is that what I want? To look back somehow.

Having endured the afternoon. Having hoped in the morning and endured in the afternoon, now at last the evening, and I can look back; the day has risen a little, like low hill, very gentle, up which I cycle coming home, and I can look back, to say, that was the distance traversed. That was the swamp of the afternoon, and those the gardens of the morning.

And all the way back until when the light behind the curtains woke me. All the way to when I woke too early. Make the mark, then. Write – and mark the line that divides suffered time from time regained. As I look back over the day. As I let my look pass over it, the whole day; the morning, with its promise and the afternoon endured. 

A hardback, a softback. Which should I read? Which should I take to my bed and read? But I am drinking wine. Drinking, and writing. Drinking to rise a little higher, to gain a little more height so I can look around me, not to this day, but the others. A passage of days, a week, longer … And to gather it up here like a bushel, what I’ve learned from those days. To mark it here, and that I’ve been here, ready to learn, ready to gather.

I think I’m half drunk. Half drunk and unready for wisdom, and to gather anything up. Half drunk, at the end of the afternoon, and having endured the afternoon. Half drunk and unsteady, and not ready to be trusted with what was to be learned. Half drunk, and to mark the page is enough – to mark it, to say, I was here, even if the mark is forgotten, even if I never read these lines again.

A day has passed – almost a whole day. The page nearly turned over; a day at its end, and now the evening, the still-light, maddeningly light evening in late spring or early summer, whichever it is. There’s too much light. Too much calm, wan light. It’s driven me in. It’s kept me indoors, working. Writing, or trying to write. Working, or attempting to work.

What have I done? What was achieved? I looked back at my prose with the usual disgust. I reread what I wrote with the usual boredom. An essay for a journal. A journal essay I must write and then rewrite – what boredom! What errors fill my first draft! What crudenesses! What idiocies!

Never a clean line. Never a clean and simple line. If I had a sentence – one sentence – then it might all be saved. A single clean sentence like a swordstroke. But there’s five hundred muddied sentences instead. Five thousand blurred words instead, thrown at the page in vague, fuzzy chunks.

Chunks of words – paragraphs – that roll along, crude and stupid. To make a crude and stupid whole, an edifice built to nothing, rising to nowhere – what boredom! What stupidity! Here, at least (but where’s ‘here’?) – here at least the illusion of movement. At least the idea of progress, one post, and then another, one and then another, in a mad and stupid profusion.

But with no rewrites, no looks back, so Eurydice can remain Eurydice, following me from Hell. So I can dream of her beauty, of her perfection and forget that it’s only a slug’s trail that links post to post. Or that those posts are only disgusting traces, slime across the world. Slime and mold in a glistening line.

There is no Eurydice; no one follows me. No Eurydice to lead from hell and no hell from which to lead her. We are all above ground now. Above, in the wan, clear light that falls equally on each. On the surface of the world, its crust, and beneath the closed heavens.

And the boredom is steady. There is the steady dependency of boredom, into whose arms I fall. Boredom grinds the hours on. I’m afraid of empty time, says W. Afraid – very well, why not? Afraid – yes, why not? why else write? why do anything but write to hold back fear and boredom, and the fear of boredom?

Write and hold it back. Write – work (but is this work?) and drive the fear back. Climb on your hillock and survey the day. Climb it and survey – look around – the whole day is like a marsh, the sky above and swamp below. The afternoon endured – and now the evening.

But at least half an hour has passed. At least time is passing. And I dream of leading time like a calf with a ring through its snout. Leading it into a sunnier place, a higher place. Leading it into brightness, where the sun shines down and the heavens are open. But boredom. But fear. The calf is a minotaur, and the day a labyrinth, and what thread can I follow that would lead out of here?

Half drunk, and in half an hour. There’s a hardback and a softback. A half-empty bottle of wine. A bottle of water. And there’s the yard before me, where the light has turned – creamy. It’s a little creamy, not unpleasant. But the skies are still closed. And the world is as though waiting. As I am waiting, although waiting’s flattened itself out, waiting’s fallen. Waiting’s lying down, all across the world.

I’m ready to learn, ready to gather. Ready to tell about the day, and these few days. A single clean sentence, that would suffice. A single sentence like a sword-stroke, all in one go. Sometimes I tell myself, describe the day. Sometimes I say, describe what happened. And I want to begin, to make a beginning, to narrate it all, and from the first.

But something seizes writing from the first, and from before the first. A kind of curse, that sets it wandering. A curse that lets it wander from itself, and from all narration. In a wierd abstraction. That says nothing. That marks that saying, doubling it up, saying nothing twice over, once and then again.

Nothing – and then nothing. Futility and then futility. But at least it is marked, I tell myself. At least there is a line drawn, and it’s evening. A drunkard’s line. A half-drunkard’s wavy line.

I should be working, of course – when else to work than at this time of year, which rises like a plateau above the forests of business in which I am usually lost? Working – no doubt, but an infection, and then a weary tiredness – the same tiredness, its eternal return, means that work is impossible, and the day is only something to cross.

How to get through the day? How to link hour to hour? To work: no, that’s impossible. I can’t concentrate; can’t gather myself together; the hours do not offer themselves as that propitious pathway along which work can progress. One day, another – and something might be written.

What is written here, of course, never counts for me as work, but nor too as its opposite. A kind of supplement, that comes with work. With it, set in motion by it like a spinning top. Something incidental the wind of work touches and sets into motion. Only it is always a borrowed motion; it does not exist for itself. Like the moon, it is bright only because of the sun.

And when there is no sun? Then writing is lost in the thickets. No plateau; no space to breathe. And no chance of that intake of breath that would precede creation. Lost in the hours, as hour fails to bind itself to hour, as time sags and breaks from itself like an ox-bow lake that separates itself from a meandering river.

Stagnancy, forest swamps – what is possible without work, without the superhighway that leads out to the heights? How to join hour to hour? Computer games, yes, that is true; and even the games on my new mobile phone: old games, games a decade old: Sonic the Hedgehog, Doom, the former too difficult; the Marble Zone (Act 3) being unconquerable. 

Books, of course – simple books, biographies. I can read them, biographies; can live another’s life by proxy. But nothing rises our of the swamp of hours. Sometimes I clear up the flat; sometimes I make phonecalls to the installation team who are supposed to be transforming the kitchen and the bathroom. Damp proof specialists visit; this is welcome.

Something has been done; once again, time has offered itself to work. But then the long hours without work, the old tiredness, the same tiredness. For a time, I took Day Nurse, half-knowing that caffeine was one of its ingredients – oh that caffeine lift! But a lift is followed by a fall, and I have to relearn the old lesson: no overdosing on caffeine. No more than one coffee and a half cup of green tea; and nothing after noon.

The old lesson – how much what has happened to me could be narrated as a neuropharmalogical case study: the effects of caffeine. An espresso and a Red Bull on the way home from work! And then up all night, and the next day – Saturday! – destroyed. I like to bore my friends with these stories. It is the kind of thing I think about: caffeine, and the effects of caffeine, and I think I could happily break off my current life to proselytise for the reduction of caffeine.

Even as I type, of course, the caffeine from my morning cup of coffee has long crossed the blood-brain barrier, and this is why I can type – why my day always unfolds like Flowers For Algernon: first morning dullness, then the morning caffeine boost, then the long and slow decline.

How much more intelligent you used to seem, said W. But that was a result of a different regime of caffeine; it was a neuropharmalogical condition, and now I’m brave enough not to overdose myself, but to wander in that vague fog which seems to be a family inheritance: the fog is genetic fog, it has reached me from generations of fogbound ancestors, for whom, likewise, the day includes tracts it is difficult to cross.

What should I be doing? I know; it is the purpose for which my new laptop in the other room is meant to serve. Work, the Great Work, the lofty striding from peak to peak, the blessed path in the air. Sometimes I wake at night with burning sentences in my head. I should write, I know that, but then – get a good night’s sleep, I tell myself, else more tiredness. Go to sleep; fall further into sleep in sleep, and then write in the morning.

But I can never lie in. I never rise late. Up by eight, always. Up and working by eight, that is usual, and often seven, and sometimes six. Up at six – but awake for a whole hour before! Up early and more wretchedly tired as my mornings grow longer. So they begin as the summer light calls me through the curtains, and I am up, tired at the computer, tired again before the yard, curtains opened: the mediocre yard.

Up, and for what? Another botched day. Another day in the swamps, leading nowhere. I dreamt of this time, all year I waited to gain the plateau – and now? But I have at least written this, and left my trace, my slug’s trail across these forty minutes. This – substitute for work, the work of anti-work, that can at least say, I was here, I was ready at the head of the day.

And isn’t that true of the whole of my life? Haven’t I always been ready, pencils sharpened, notebook open, for the Great Work that has never actually begun? Haven’t I made time, always time, for the Great Work to withhold itself and grant me only the miserable consolation of writing of what I cannot do?

But then I know I owe what I am – what little I am – to this withholding. I throw a shadow ahead of myself, I make dark that patch of time in which the Work could begin. Ah, it is possible, the Work, but not for me. Yes, it is possible – it must come – but never to me.

The new book laughs at me. Not a line, you’ve not written a line. The new book is laughing: do you think you can write me? Do you think you can bring me to birth? But you’ve not written a line. Not a line! Rather, you’ve crossed out everything you’ve written! Rather, in your tiredness, in your vagueness, everything you’ve written has crossed itself out! Idiot, why did you think you were as strong as me! Dazed ox, wanderer through the day, why did you think you could even begin to write me!

I’ve watched you, says the book, as I have always watched. To the office, and then to the shops. To Marks and Spencer for your salad and you sandwich, to the Refrectory for your wrap, your little circumnavigations, your vague perambulations, your movements around and around town, the return of the same: I am watching, watching and laughing, watching you fail and laughing at your failure. Did you think you could match your strength with mine?

Last weekend, says the book, you ruined yourself with caffeine, didn’t you? Half a cafe mocha, that’s what you thought it would take, didn’t you? That’s what you thought would give you the strength, wasn’t it? Saturday – do you remember that? Saturday, wandering around town, cursing yourself for not working, going out to buy a paper, and then to buy some envelopes, and then to buy a snack, and then, god knows, to the charity shop to look for books, and then to the secondhand CD shop to look for albums – what a day! What a failure of the day!

But there was still Sunday to come, still Sunday, when you woke looking more tired than ever, more ill than ever, when you woke and washed and dressed and went off again to the office. To the office! On a Sunday! Nothing better, the world quiet, world can be done, you thought you’d meet me on the plane of Sunday, you thought we’d do combat on that open plane, you thought we’d meet at last. Laughter. What happened? Sunday rotted. The day was rotten, like an old log in stagnant water.

Nothing, nothing: no work. Down to the streets, down the cobbled alley and into the town. The same salad, the same sandwich. The same wandering, I saw you, dazed ox, I saw you and I laughed. Another half cup of mocha. Then, when that didn’t work, and your tiredness and vagueness seemed worse than before, half a can of Irn-Bru. Then, for a time, I drew back. Then, was it for an hour?, I drew back. You wrote, I admit it. You began to write me. A whole weekend, and now writing began. It was five o’clock, and you began. After nine hours in the office, and you began.

Blissful hours! You were happy, weren’t you? Joy at last! You’d missed the deadline, or so you thought, but at least you were working! The deadline had passed, but you thought: I’ve written something, I’ve put something together, that’s how it was. You thought: I’ve pushed back the illness, I’ve pushed back tiredness, I’ve cleared a little space for myself, I’ve met my old adversary on my own terms; I have written. And you wrote, with that little space cleared. You wrote, and I fell back into the forest, I was lost there.

Even I was impressed, says the book. Even I thought: he’s earned it. I retreated, not laughing anymore. I went, not laughing, and not even looking forward to the time when, I knew, I would laugh again. He’ll exhaust himself, I told myself, but now shaking my head. Tomorrow, the same wandering. Tomorrow, the same dazed ox, wandering around town.

We saw you then, we do not watch you now, you’re no one to us, not anymore. Lost to us, that’s what you are – lost, and who will ever find you? We will not; we are not looking. What interest have we in you; we have other things to do; we have our tasks, our projects; we are busy, always busy, and for that reason you are always far from our minds.

But sometimes, unbidden, a memory comes. Sometimes one of us looks up and remembers: him. Him: you. That is how we remember you, by starts, by turns, and we look up from our labours, we who are so busy, and it comes to us, our early days, when we were young and you were young, but it was really by your youth that we were young; in truth, we lived from your youth, we drew strength from it, for it was the youth of hope, of the great dawn. It was our youth: the whole sky, the dawn; everything was possible; the world gave itself anew.

Who were we, so young with your youth? What had we become? Ah, we were young, then – young as you were young, and full of hope! But our youth was a second youth – or a third; our innocence was innocence regained. Your splendour was that you lived youth and innocence for the first time. What splendour! How splendidly did you greet the day! How splendid, your strong arms that stretched up towards the day!

The morning of the world, that’s what we called it. And you were a son of the morning, just as we, watching you, likewise became sons and daughters of the morning. But what happened? When did it set in, the long decline? About when did it start, the decline? Because things are different now, aren’t they? Things have changed irrevocably, haven’t they? It’s all changed; the earth turned from light into darkness; the great earth turned its great bulk away from the light. Night was coming; darkness was coming, the long wane of strength.

You were stronger than us, then. Stronger: you had not lived before, as we had lived before; you had been innocent from the start, but ours was a borrowed innocence; it was not ours, not truly. We became weary before you’d even noticed how the day had changed; for it had changed. As a boy, you cycled around the housing estates. Older, you walked around those estates at night with others, and a bottle of Thunderbird. Older still, and you fell ill in those estates; you fell and did not rise, and so passed the afternoon of your life, recumbent, the sun no longer at full strength above you, no longer the splendid sky; now the white and indefinite expanse; all cloud, a single, unbroken cloud that had covered the world.

What chance did you have? Yet older, and you rose, but you did not stretch your arms up in the morning. Something in you was destroyed; strength had turned against you; you were not young. Who were you then? And who were we? Shadows of ourselves, who were only shadows. Shadows of what we were, and we were already shadows, nothing more. What a curse you were! What a burden! It was if you lived from us, that you took our strength.

What could we do but let you go? What other fate awaited us? If let you go we must, then … We let you go; you went; lightened, we imagined, disencumbered, we imagined, lighter in step. Where would you go? The day was yours, the housing estates spread in all directions; the whole world had been conquered. Space was accounted for, and time – time was worktime, and it was time for you to work. You disappeared; we busied ourselves with tasks; we watched everyone, we watched no one, we who had taken the place of the old gods and were waiting, yet for the new gods, we who were only placekeepers, the ones never quite there, the waiters, the watchers, the ones without power.

But now we fear we will be stronger than you, who were once so strong. That is why we do not look for you. We are afraid; afraid to know in you our own ruin – afraid to have it confirmed, to see what we were not and never were, to see it in you. Who are you, now? Where are you? Forbidden questions. We do not speak of you. But sometimes, still, memories come unbidden. Sometimes, yet, we remember your youth and your hopes, and how our youth and hope were reborn with you.

We all hate you, we’re all disappointed with you, but we’re finished with disappointment, just as we’ve finished with resignation. Do we hate you? Yes, we still hate you, but our hatred has become diffuse, as if it cannot find you. Hatred is the whole sky just as what is hated – you – is as diffuse and spread as widely as the city.

Hatred – the last bond between you and us, but one that is infinitely attenuated, that is not really a bond at all. We would like to be completely indifferent, to sever all ties with you, who so disappointed us, who were always such a failure, but perhaps near-indifference is enough.

Sometimes, a little twinge of disgust: he’s still alive! Still there! If we looked, we’d find you. But it goes away. Sometimes, a little hatred: he’s a living affront! His stupidity! His vacancy!, but that, too, disappears. Do not look for him; forget him – this is what we tell ourselves; forget that he existed and that he ever existed, he who was so disappointing, he in whom we placed our hopes.

Our hopes! What folly! Who were we to hope – and in you? In you! What foolishness! Perhaps it wasn’t your fault. Perhaps it wasn’t your fault, but that does not mitigate it. Still the same – disappointment. Still the daily refutation of hope. But it is an old wound, and healing over. An old wound, and nearly forgotten.

Perhaps, we told ourselves, he’s there to remind us of what cannot be hoped for. Perhaps it is that he reminds us of our limitations, of our futility. It is as such we despise him, of that we are sure; but we have become reconciled to them: our horizons, our limitations. There is much we cannot do. There are many possibilities that are closed to us. Is it because we are older that we do not mind what we cannot do? Is it because of our age – how old are we now? – that we no longer protest?

You disappointed us, that is true. You failed to rise to his vocation, or perhaps we were mistaken, perhaps there was no vocation, perhaps you were too stupid, too stupid and too blind ever to have a vocation, let alone rise to one. Up and down Oxford Street you went, fooling no one. Up and down, like an idiot, not a thought in your head. We watched you, we waited, but nothing happened, you did nothing, you seemed incapable of everything. Why him?, we asked ourselves. Were we so stupid? Were we so deluded? Where had we gone wrong in choosing you, in picking you out from the crowd?

One day, you became ill. You lay down; you didn’t get up. This was appropriate, we thought. You shouldn’t get up, we thought, your story was over. You’d disappointed us – and died. This was apt, this was fitting. Disappointment – and then death. But you survived, didn’t you? You lived, didn’t you, well insomuch as you ever lived. Were you alive? Too alive, although just barely alive. Still too alive, still breathing.

And one day you rose. One day you became vertical again, one day you went out to the street and before long were going up and down Oxford Street as you used to do. It was as if nothing had happened: up and down the road like an idiot, going from cafe to cafe, like an idiot. What an affront! We sighed. Was there no longer such a thing as destiny? The old world was bound by that – destiny, but the new one?

Where are you now? We haven’t kept up. It’s only occasionally our thoughts turn to you; we are momentarily vexed, and then turn back to our tasks and projects. Where are you? Everywhere and nowhere, we tell ourselves. On Oxford Street? No doubt; but elsewhere, too – elsewhere and everywhere, a living affront.

God knows I’m stupid, I’ve been told often enough. Stupid – I know it, stupid in every fibre of my body, stupid from head to toe. Yes, I am stupid, I have it said to me and I say it myself: I am stupid. What else am I but that – stupid? At least I admit it; at least I shoulder my stupidity. I can declare: I am stupid. It is a fact. The sky is blue; I am stupid. It is February; I am stupid. A fact among other facts and nothing to be done.

Am I stupid? Certainly I am stupid. Am I am an idiot? Certainly that: an idiot, a drooler, that’s what I’m good for. They keep me among them for reasons of contrast. I am an idiot, which means they’re – not idiots. I am dimmer than any of them, they know that, which is why they keep me amongst them. An idiot – to provide a contrast, a backdrop. Idiocy – that lets their intelligence shine forth all the more splendidly. Idiocy! Foolishness! To let them radiate brilliance in all directions! That is my purpose; I have my place.

Stupid – that’s what I am. Stupid through and through and blinking in the sun, lost in my stupidity. Droolingly stupid and lost in it – my stupidity just as the summer road is lost in haze. How vague I am! How lost, how retarded! I’m late for everything, even myself; I lag behind everything, even myself; I drag myself behind myself, every step is an effort. But I am used to it, I know what it is never to arrive all at once – I know that vagueness which dissolves everything.

Stupid – stranded in a past that is not mine. So lost I cannot come to myself. Snagged – but by what? What caught me then, so long ago, before I was born? On what was I caught so that I could not assume my existence? There is something that obsesses me – in my own past. I am writing to uncover it – I’m looking for it, the root of my idiocy, idiocy’s radicle. But I can’t find it. Where is it buried? Where has it buried me?

Sometimes I dream I’ve found it in the earth, the root – my idiocy. Sometimes I dreamed I’ve uncovered the dirt and found him, the non-idiot I also am. There he is, unmoving, pallid, not dead but dreaming just as I am dreaming. I am an idiot – but who is he, the non-idiot? I dream of him and he dreams of me. In another life, I am not an idiot, that’s what I tell myself. In another life – but how to find it, the other life?

Is that it, have you got anything else? Is that it, is that all, haven’t you got anything else? Is this how it’ll end? Because there’s nothing here, nothing of interest. You’ve bored everyone to death, they’ve all left, they’ve got some sense, they got out a long time ago, they despaired of you a long time ago, but you kept going, didn’t you? You tried to keep going, didn’t you, long after it’d finished? What’s the point? Why bother? Writing nothing for no one. Amusing no one and interesting no one and boring everyone.

Not so long ago, you thought it was going rather well, didn’t you? It wasn’t so long ago that you thought it’d continue forever, day after day, from now until eternity, didn’t you? But that’s not going to happen now is it? Nothing’s happening, is it – it’s coming to an end, the blog’s beached itself at the end, the blog is like some vast and disgusting whale that’s beached itself at the end. There it is, no one’s interested, but some vast and disgusting body is rotting in the sun. A vast and disgusting body, a vast and disgusting body of prose no one’s interested in and no one’s excited about. Vast, disgusting and without point.

Who’s interested? I can’t see anyone, can you? But still you go on. Still, every day, a little effort, one more effort, but nothing is said, it’s already posthumous, it’s all finished, you’ve outlived your welcome. In truth, no one was especially welcoming. In truth, you were met only with indifference, everyone’s back was turned to you, but you’ve worn even indifference away, haven’t you?

What rubbish you write! What contentless rubbish, day after day with no purpose, no point! What are you trying to reach? What are you trying to achieve? You’re wasting your time and if anyone were reading you’d be wasting their time, too. Luckily no one is reading, no one reads, they’ve got better things to do. And haven’t you got better things to do? Haven’t you got pubs to go to and books to read and a job to do? Haven’t you something better to do than this?

It’s like some great, vile protest, a protest against nothing in particular, a rebellion against nothing at all that is ignored by everyone. Like a dirty protest, shit smeared all over the walls of your room, shit on the bars, shit on the floor, shit on the ceiling, shit everywhere, but a protest without point, a protest without purpose, just stupidity, stupidity and waste incarnate, a kind of dull and stupid tenacity going on and on, day after day, one day after another, writing about this and then about that, and finally reducing yourself to writing about writing or not-writing, writing about the writing you cannot write, and the writing you write in lieu of writing, in lieu of any content other than whining about not being able to write, and who’s interested, anyway, who’s interested, do you suppose? No one, that’s the answer. Not one person, no one’s interested in your dirty protest, no one’s interested in the filth in your cell.

I know who you are, I know your face, I know your heavy body and your heavy, apish hand. I know who you are, ape – Kafka’s ape, the ape captured, the ape who watches others and plans to imitate them, the ape who resolves to become one of them, one of them outside, one of those who walk to and fro in the world, men in suits. That’s who you are, isn’t it? The ape! The ape not yet escaped! The ape who, unlike the ape of the story, stays in his cell. The ape who fails to imitate anyone succesful, the ape through whom everyone can see, the obvious ape, the ape who can do nothing but ape and is obvious in his aping.

For a time, it entertained them, your readers. For a time it was amusing to see an ape hop about and imitate others and pretend to write, crouched over a pad, mouthing the letters as he formed them. For a time – laughter at the ape who thought who could be anyone but an ape, but who in fact remained an ape, as was obvious to anyone: an ape, and that first of all, but not an ape in the jungle, not the cousin of other wild apes content to scamper about the jungle, but a half-tame ape, an ape who’d like to pass himself off as human, an ape lost in the dream of becoming human but all the while only an ape, merely an ape, not an ape among apes, but an ape in a cage.

What happened? Is it that you failed in your apish imitations – and not only once, but twice – failed in terms of what you wanted to become, and failed even in your efforts to become what you are not? Doubly failing, failing once and then again, failing for a first time and then another time, first as an ape trying to be human, then an ape trying to be an ape – but you failed a third time, didn’t you? If you’d failed only twice, you’d be an ape like the others, an ape content once again to be an ape, to run with apes and to scamper about with apes. You could have been released back into the wild, couldn’t you?

But that’s not what happened, is it? You can’t be released, can you? You don’t have that, do you – the charm of a wild beast, the charm of a beast who should be lost in the jungle? Because being an ape is not enough for you, is it? Being an ape is not enough and being human is impossible, is it? Merely being an ape is not enough for you, not now. You’re after something else, aren’t you? Now it’s not enough for you to write pretending you’re human, just as it’s not enough to keep quiet, is it? Neither ape nor human. Neither writing nor silence, but this instead – this beached and rotting writing. Neither nor, neither one nor the other, ne uter, that’s what you cry isn’t it? Ne uter, ne uter, that’s what you whimper in the corner of your cell, isn’t it?

Books about books: you moan about them, don’t you? Books about books – not books, but books about books – that’s where you think the problem is’ don’t you? Books about books – and not books, that’s the problem, for you, isn’t it? Not enough – books. Too many – books about books.

Well then, are you going to write a book? Are you going to write a book that is not a book about books? What are you going to do about them, these books about books? Are you going to write a book – a real book – of your own? Because everyone’s writing books about books, that’s what you tell yourself, isn’t it? Books about books, and not a single book, you whine. Books about books about books, Byzantism and Alexandrianism, the long decline, you whine. Books about books but no books, you whine.

So what are you going to do about it? Are you going to write a book that is not a book about books? Are you – a book and not a book about books? Is that what you’re going to do? Is it? I’ve never heard anyone say, I want to grow up to be a critic, said Richard Pryor. You don’t want to be a critic, do you? You don’t want to be a writer who writes at one remove, do you? You want to be a primary author, don’t you? You’ve bought the myth, haven’t you? You want to write your own books in your own name, don’t you? That’s what you’re dreaming of, isn’t it?

A book. Under your own name. Not a book about books, but a book. In your own name. A book on its own two feet. A book alone, and that is not about other books. A book! And not a book about books! That’s what you want, isn’t it: to write a book! No longer writing at one remove, but a book! On its own two feet: the book! That will not even require your signature! That will dismiss you as soon as it is written! A book, all by itself, with no need for you, that’s what you want, isn’t it? To be refused by the book you made! To be given back to yourself by the book! To feel your own book slam the door in your face! To be dismissed by your own book!

Not a book about books, not a commentary-book or an introductory-book, but a book unto itself, a book on two feet, a book that raises itself out of nothing and hangs there in the void. The book like a star contracted upon itself. The book like the star that burns only itself, remote and distant. The book that does not need you. Pinnochio who does not want you to be his father. The golem who no longer obeys your commands. There it goes, the Frankenstein book, sufficient unto itself. There it goes, cleverer than you and better than you, the book that is sufficient unto itself.

Better than you, cleverer than you, surprassing you in everything: your book that is no longer your book. The book which says: I don’t need you and disappears. The book which has already gone off on its own adventures, that’s what you want, isn’t it? To be dismissed. To be expelled by something you wrought. To create what finds you imperfect. To create what is more perfect than you. To be dismissed by it, its perfection. To be cast out into contingency and flux. To be exiled by the book, which is paradise. To be expelled, sent out by the paradise of the book, that’s what you want.

To make something you could not make. To write beyond your abilities. To make – the book. And not a book about books. The book – on two legs, its own two legs, running through the forest like Baba Yaga’s hut. The book – appearing and disappearing like Doctor Who’s Tardis. The book – not a book about books, but a real book. Not a fabrication, but something real. Not dead, but alive – a living book that leaps up and runs about. A living book, a living flame, a star which consumes only itself.

And you, who will you be, cast into the outer darkness? Who will you be, measured by your book? Like a miserable father whose child surpasses him. Like a miserable ancestor of a glorious forebear, dismissed, cast out. That’s what you want, isn’t it – to cast yourself out. That’s what you want: to dismiss yourself. To say, get out!  Leave! We don’t want you here! To say it to yourself through the book! To hear it from the lips of the book! To hear the book say, get out! we don’t need you here! and for the book to turn its shoulder to you. For the book to turn its great back to you.

You are not Fay Wray to the book’s Kong. You are not Naomi Watts to the King of the jungle. The book does not want you; it wll not seek you. It closes itself to you. It will lie in your hands, closed and inert. There it is, in your hands, dreaming of who knows what. There it is, the book, but elsewhere the book is already adventuring. Here it is, sent by the publishers, the book – but it’s already having adventures of its own. Adventures – away from you, dismissing you. That’s what you’d write, isn’t it – the book, and not a book about books.

That’s what you’re aiming for, isn’t it? That’s what will justify your life, isn’t it? The misery and stupidity of your life. The pointlessness of your life – that’s what will justify it, isn’t it? That it’s going nowhere, that it was botched, that it missed all the marks – that’s what will redeem it, won’t it? You remember what Zarathustra said about redemption don’t you? It’s to will your own past – to have willed that you lived as you lived. That’s what you want by way of the book, isn’t it? To expunge all the misery and failure, isn’t it? To wipe it clean, the mess of a life – to remove the stain of your life.

For that’s what your life is, isn’t it – a stain. You’ve left a stain instead of a life. A stain – and not a legacy. And so you dream the book will be your legacy. And so the book becomes the dreamt-of-legacy, the anti-stain, the wiping away of stains and smears and scum. So the book will justify and redeem the misery of your life. So you can say: I willed it thus, my life. So it can be said: I willed it thus, willed that it happened thus, my life.

You will say: so was my life justified and redeemed. So did it make sense – through the book. Through the book which was not a book about books, but a book. Through the clean gesture of the book. Through the knife stroke of the book. Through the sword of judgement that comes down as the book. Redeem me, book! Redeem my life, book! Let me say: I willed it thus, all of my life. Let me say, as I cross the bridge: it was worth it, and let it come again, my life. Let me say: let it come again, all of it, the whole cosmos – let it come again, one more time, I will it thus. That’s what you want, isn’t it?

Because what would your life be worth otherwise? What will it have been worth? Because what else will your life have been but the attempt to write the book? Mishima got it wrong, didn’t he – trying to redeem a life outside of the book – to redeem writing by a violent act. Isn’t it that the act, too, must belong to the book? Mishima’s ritual suicide lies outside of his book, and is therefore unredeemed. His death, his hostage-taking of the army general, his doomed speech to the troops lies outside the book, and means nothing. You will not die, you who the book will give birth like a son? You will not die, you who are reborn as the book gives birth to itself, father to the matrix that will bear you.

I will be the son of my book, that’s what you tell yourself, isn’t it? I will be the father of my book, which will give birth to me as to its son, that’s what you hope for, isn’t it? Whisper it: I will be alive and dead by the book. Whisper it: I will live in death by the birth of my book.

You always take the easiest path, don’t you? Always the easiest path, the simplest one. Think of the sacrifices everyone made for you. Think of what they did for you, all the others, to throw you a little farther ahead than they were able to get. Think of them, the others, who prepared the way for you and made things easier for you. And what will you do? What contribution will you make?

All you’ve ever wanted is a corner in which to work. That’s all you want, isn’t it: a corner, quiet, in which to work. Outside, the storms are raging, outside it’s all going to pot, but you are in your corner, inside, warm and safe and taking account of nothing but what you call your work. Peace, that’s what you want, isn’t it? Peace, that would be enough, wouldn’t it? Is that’s how you’re going to pass your life: in your corner, working away? Will that be what you did with your life, working in your corner while the storms rage outside?

Because the storms are raging and a world is ending. Because they are here, the great storms, and soon the old world will have passed. But you’re working, aren’t you? You’re busy, aren’t you, busy in your corner, too busy for anything but what you call your work. Do you understand what it is like for them, for the rest of them? Do you know what sacrifices were made for you and in your name? And for what? What have you done with your life, what have you done for anything but what you call your work? I’ll tell you what: nothing.

And you’ve done nothing for yourself, do you understand that? You’ve not even done anything for yourself, do you know that? One day, another, on the same detour. One day, another, on the long trail away from life and meaning and purpose. For you took the wrong turn, didn’t you? You let yourself get lost, didn’t you? And where have you found yourself? In the corner, working in the corner. In the corner, away from the others, your back turned to the world, working.

And what is it you’re working on? What is it that’s so important you’ve neglected everyone around you? What is it of such world-shaking significance which means you can justify your neglect of everything about you? What is the mighty task for which you require such peace? What is so significant that you require such silence?

Think of them, your ancestors. Think of how they worked, how they came to this country from afar and worked. Think of them, sacrificing themselves for you. What have you done? What is it that you’ve done with your life? For you’re not young, are you? You’re not even young any more, are you? What have you got to show for it, your youth? What can you show for the chances you’ve had?

Isn’t it time to do something with your life? Because there’s no way of justifying it, is there, your life? You can’t justify it to yourself, can you, your life? Is that why you work? Is that why you turn away from the world to work? You’re turning away from yourself, aren’t you, and your own shame? You’re turning away from your shame, the shame that should fill everything you do, aren’t you? Because you know it’s a lie, don’t you? You know your own imposture, don’t you?

You turned your back to the world, and from what needs your attention in the world. You turned your back on the world and ignored the storms of the world. You know it. You know what you might have done. You know what you could have done. And it fills you with shame, doesn’t it? It fills you with shame to think what others might have done in your place, and with the opportunities you had, doesn’t it? It fills you with shame to think of the ancestors, that they came to this country with nothing and made a world for themselves with nothing?

What a childhood you had! You wanted for nothing! They had nothing, your ancestors, and what did you have – everything? It fills you with shame, doesn’t it, which is why you call out for peace and turn yourself to the wall? It makes you ashamed, doesn’t it, which is why you draw the curtains and turn to your corner? Everyone did what they could for you and what do you do? Nothing.

But you’re getting old, there’s no question of that. Old, and you’re cultivating tics, aren’t you? Old – and you’ve tics and quirks, haven’t you? Your eyes and dulling and your hair is greying. It’s going wrong, you can’t deny that. Old, old, and what have you done? Old, too many years passed, and what are you doing?

You took the easy path, didn’t you? You took the way of indolence and idleness, didn’t you? You took the way of laziness and slackness, didn’t you? The storms are raging, and what are you doing? The world’s tearing itself apart and what have you done?

Quirks and tics – that’s your future, isn’t it? You’re becoming an eccentric, aren’t you? Life’s giving you up, isn’t it? Life’s giving up on you, isn’t it? Tics and quirks, and soon they’ll have to make excuses for you, your friends and family, won’t they? Quirks and tics, and they’ll have to excuse you, won’t they? Because you’ve turned away from them, haven’t you? You’ve turned away from everything and everyone, haven’t you? And soon the process will be complete. Soon, it will be done. You’ll tell yourself, I failed, but I tried. You’ll say to yourself, I failed, but I tried – but that is a lie. Because in the end, you took the easiest of routes, didn’t you?

What have you done? What have you achieved? Nothing. But that’s not new. You knew that, didn’t you? You knew it had to be that way, didn’t you? But what’s worse – what’s so much worse is that you never tried, did you? Worst of all is that you did not try, did you? You’re getting old, you can’t ignore that, though you try to. You’re getting old, and you’re too old to lie to yourself, aren’t you?

All around you the storms are raging. All around you – the raging storm. And you turned from the storms. You turned away. You turned – and what is worst is you knew you were turning. You turned – you knew, by the shame in you, you knew. In shame, you knew – knew from what you were turning, just as you still know it. And isn’t that the worst thing about you? Isn’t that the worst, that you know what you’ve done and what you’re doing?

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.

When is it out, the second book? When’s it coming out, the second book? This week, isn’t it? It’s coming out this week, isn’t it, the second book? The first book wasn’t enough, was it? There had to be a second book. The first book, by itself, was insufficient, but why did there have to be a second book? Why a second book, when the first book was so wretched? Or was it because the first book was wretched that there needed to be a second book? Was it because of the wretchedness of the first that there had to be the second?

The first book: wretched, and the second book? Did you think the second book wouldn’t be just as wretched as the first? Didn’t you think: the first book was wretched, and the second book … will also be wretched? How was it you could summon the hope that the second book would be better than the first? How was it you could find strength enough to hope that the miracle would be achieved and the second book would be better than the first? For it wasn’t better, was it? And that was inevitable, wasn’t it? In what other direction could it have gone? What else might have happened?

The first book: wretched. The second book: also wretched. Did you really think things would change with the second book? Did you really think something had changed between the first book and the second one? Nothing changed, did it? Nothing changed, between the first book and the second, did it? The second book, like the first book: wretched. The first book: wretched, like the second book: also wretched. How amusing it was for me to learn as soon as the first book was out that there was to be a second book! How funny to learn of the second book that would follow on the heels of the first!

For all your modesty, you’re full of hubris, aren’t you? You think you’re special and unlike the others, don’t you? Whereas in fact you are just like the others, and worse than the others. Whereas you, compared to the others, are lacking in what allows them to refrain from writing a second book which repeats exactly the same errors as the first book. Restraint: that’s what you lack, isn’t it? Measure: that’s what lacking in you, isn’t it? The first book was bad, so what did you do? Take a few years out? Spend a few years thinking and meditating? No: you wrote a second book. As soon as the first book was done, you began the second book.

It wasn’t enough that the first book was wretched – you had to write a second book, too, didn’t you? And tell us, what did you hope to gain from the second book? What did you hope to achieve? To redeem the first book – well you didn’t do that, did you? To abolish the memory of the first book – well that’s what you didn’t do. You were the author of one bad book, weren’t you – just one. And now – now – you are the author of two bad books. You weren’t content to write one bad book, you had to write another. First one, then the other. First one book and then another, on the heels of the first book.

And have you learnt your lesson now? Have you learnt that there is absolutely no chance of you writing anything of quality? Have you learnt of your total inadequacy with respect to writing? Has it be burnt into you as it should be burnt? Has it been branded on your forehead as it should be branded: BAD WRITER? Because you’ve won awards for it, haven’t you – bad writing? Who else but you could have won such an award? Who but you would be capable of it – an award for bad writing? I’ll bet they made that award up especially for you. I’ll bet they dreamt up that award especially for you and gave the award to you and then discontinued the award as soon as you received it, didn’t they?

Think of what the others could have written in your place. Think of what others might have achieved, had they been given all your chances. You’re an usurper, aren’t you? You occupy a place others should have, and you do so through luck. Yes, you were lucky as others were unlucky, weren’t you? You were lucky, others unlucky, and so you found yourself in a place where you could begin writing books.

An oeuvre – is that what you dreamt of making? An oeuvre – was it that you dreamt of putting together, volume by volume? Your collected works – was it that of which you were dreaming? But instead, what have you realised? One book – botched, a second book – also botched. And a third – is there to be a third book? Are you going to make it a trilogy: three botched books? Is there to be a third bad book? And then, if there’s a third, why not make it a tetralogy? If there’s to be a third, why not a fourth?

Have you the decency to stop now? Have you learnt to keep it under control and to stop? You haven’t, have you? You’re going to continue, aren’t you? You have other books you’re going to write, haven’t you? There’s more to come, isn’t there? You’re not going to be content with two, are you? When’s the next one going to be written – and the one after that? When are they coming out, the next volume and the one after – your oeuvre? When are they going to come out, your collected works?

What a life! What a travesty of a life, writing in the place others could have had to write something worthwhile! Who let you write a book? Who let you write one book and then another? Why aren’t people preventing you writing books? Why aren’t they writing you strong letters of complaint, day after day about your books? Why aren’t there people at your door crying out against your books?

I’ll tell you why: because no one cares about books, that’s why. Because your books are the least interesting thing in the world, that’s why. Because your books, like other books, are produced at a loss, that’s what. A publisher’s potlatch, that’s what. A sop to the academic community, that’s what. In the end, you were lucky, by some strange lapse you were allowed to publish something, and then, by another lapse, you were allowed to publish something else, weren’t you?

Do you think you could have published something in the old days? Do you think you could have brought out a first book and then a second book when there was proper peer review and proper editors? Because it wouldn’t have happened, would it? You’re a sign of what is wrong with the entire publishing industry, aren’t you? That you published one book and then another is a sign of what is wrong with the whole industry, isn’t it?

What happened? When did it collapse, the publishing industry? When did it occur, the great collapse? Because it happened, didn’t it? They published your first book, didn’t they? And then, to compound the error, they published your second book, didn’t they? Because it’s out in the next few days, isn’t it? It’s out, published to an indifferent world, isn’t it? Why didn’t they have the sense to pulp it? Why didn’t they pulp the whole edition? Why didn’t they spot your first book and then your second book? How did you slip them past them? How did you slip a first book and then a second book past them?

But in the end, you slipped nothing by them, did you? It wasn’t due to your cunning or your cleverness that you slipped a book by them, is it? For in truth, they didn’t care what they published, did they? In truth, it didn’t matter them, what they published, did it? No searchlights were seeking to pick you out, were they? No sentries were posted on the gate, were they? You slipped nothing by, that’s the truth. They came to your door and knocked on their door, didn’t they? Came to your door and knocked on your door and asked you whether you had anything to publish, didn’t they?

And what did you say, when they asked you the first time? Yes, please. And what did you say, when they asked you the second time? Yes, please. Did you think you were published because of your reputation? Did you think it was the good esteem in which you were held that got you published? In the end, it’s an indictment of the entire publishing industry that you’ve published another book. In the end, it’s a sign that everything’s gone wrong with the publishing industry that you’ve published a second book.

Look at you, with your pens lined up on your desk and a space cleared on your desk. Look at you, with a moleskine on your desk and the pens and the keyboard on your desk. Look at you, all ready, ready to begin, with your keyboard and your monitor and a fresh page open on the word processor. Ready to begin, the flat is quiet, your room is quiet, a pool of light falls on the desk, and there are your pens and your moleskine with your pencilled notes and your keyboard and the monitor, all ready.

Look at you, in your flat, living alone as you always dreamed of living, living in peace as you wanted to live. Look at you, living, tonight, in quietness, because the students above you are quiet. Your whole life led up to this, didn’t it? This is where you wanted to be your whole life, isn’t it? In a room that’s quiet and with a computer of your own and an internet connection of your own, isn’t it? This is what you always wanted, isn’t it, a room, and some time to write? And where’s it going? In what direction is it heading? What are you up to in your room, with your pens and your moleskine and your computer? Where’s it all going, tonight, the night to which all other nights were point? Where it’s heading, what have you prepared yourself for, what are you ready for, tonight, this night of nights?

Because you could be out, couldn’t you? Your friends just rang you from the pub, didn’t they? You could be out, couldn’t you, but instead where are you? I’ll tell you where you are: inside, that’s where you are. Inside, inside your room, with your pens and your moleksine and an open page on the monitor. What are you doing, all alone? What are you doing in peace, and in the warmth of your flat? Where’s it all going? Before, you only had a room, isn’t that right? Before it was one room or another, a room in a succession of rooms, isn’t that right? Before, you lived with others, and you had to put up with others, all the while dreaming of a quiet room in a quiet flat in which, finally, you could set to work.

So here you are alone, at last, in peace, at last, and ready to begin, with your pens and your moleskine, with your monitor and your keyboard. Once you had to borrow your housemate’s internet connection, didn’t you? You didn’t have a connection of your own, did you? You had to wait for him to finish his own work and then ask his permission to use his computer and then endure him watching over you, didn’t you? And now you have one, what are you going to do? Now you’ve got a connection, what are you going to do with it, what are you going to send out into the world? Because that’s what you were waiting for, wasn’t it? You spent your whole life waiting for it, didn’t you? And now you’ve got it, haven’t you, a computer of your own and an internet connection of your own, haven’t you?

Once you had the oldest and most unreliable of computers, didn’t you? Once it was the most unreliable of computers that was yours, wasn’t it? And now? Now you’ve a reliable computer and a flatscreen monitor, haven’t you? So what are you going to do with it, your computer? What are you going to write, now you’ve got time and peace in which to write? For a long time you had no money, did you? For a long time, it was a struggle passing from day to day, wasn’t it?

The council owed you Housing Benefit and the university owed you backpay, didn’t it? You went daily to the council and daily to the university, back and forth on the bus, didn’t you? You were eaten up with frustration, weren’t you? And now? You work; you pay for your flat, don’t you? You have a decent flat in a decent area, don’t you? So what are you going to do in it, your flat, now you have it? What great work are you going to write in your flat, on your computer? What is it you’re going to achieve in your flat, after years of struggle?

I’ll tell you: the same thing you’ll achieve when one day you get Wi-Fi and a laptop and you have a car outside: nothing. The same as you will achieve when you’ve been promoted and you can move to a bigger flat which isn’t damp and has a garden: nothing. The same as you’ll achieve when you can go on holiday and take city breaks: nothing. You’ll achieve nothing, just as you always achieved nothing. You won’t achieve anything just as you have never achieved anything.

Shall I tell you where it’s going? Nowhere. Shall I tell you where it’s heading? Nowhere. You’ll never write anything, do you know that? It’s going nowhere, do you know that? You’re getting older, aren’t you? The years are passing, aren’t they? How old are you now? How old will you be next year? The years are passing. You’re doing nothing, writing nothing, achieving nothing. And you’re getting older, aren’t you? Another year’s nearly up, isn’t it? Another year, and what have you done? I’ll tell you what you’ve done: nothing. I’ll tell you: not a thing.

With everything that’s happening in the world, you’ve done nothing. With all the horrors of the world, you’ve not a done a thing, have you? Have you helped anyone? Have you contributed to the greater good of mankind? You’ve not even helped yourself, have you? You’ve not even made anything of yourself, have you? Look at you, with your clean desk and your moleskine. What’s in its pages, tell me that? What’s in them, what have you written? What did you write on the train today? I know: a few lines from Joubert. You copied a few lines from Joubert.

Joubert, of all people! You, reading Joubert, of all people! In truth, you only read Joubert, you only picked his book off the shelves to give you the last hope, the last possible hope. You read Joubert, who published nothing during his life, after you read Kafka, who wanted his novels burnt; and you read Kafka, didn’t you, after you read Lawrence, who wrote a whole oeuvre, didn’t he – and you read Lawrence after you read Rimbaud, didn’t you, who was a prodigy. And each time you failed, didn’t you? failed to be a Rimbaud, failed to be a Lawrence, failed to be a Kafka and now – you’re reading Joubert.

Do you think someone will publish your jottings after you die? Do you think your friends will get together and publish a volume of your meditations a few years after you die? Because it’s not going to happen, you know that, don’t you? You’ve read Joubert – now read back over what you’ve written. You’ve read Joubert – but what have you written? Do you think, with a few lines from Joubert in your moleskine that you’ll be inspired to write like Joubert? Because I can tell you now, the last person you resemble is Joubert.

Look at you, at your desk, typing. Look at you, with quotes from Joubert written down in your moleskine beside you. Look at you, ready to write, ready to begin. But you won’t begin anything, will you. Nothing is brewing, is it? Nothing’s readying itself, is it? It’s night outside, isn’t it? In the window, you can see yourself reflected, can’t you? What do you see? Tell me what you see? I’ll tell you what I see: a failure. That’s what I see: a failure.

Do you know you’re a failure? You don’t quite know it yet, do you? You haven’t quite come to terms with it, your failure, have you? Still, there’s always Joubert, isn’t there? Perhaps your work will be gathered by your friends after your death and published, mightn’t it? Is that what you’re waiting for? It is, isn’t it? Hope springs eternal, doesn’t it? There’s always hope, isn’t there?

But unlike you, Joubert, it says in the introduction, was a man immensely admired by others. Unlike you, who have lived in one room after another, ready, waiting, but devoid of achievement, Joubert was known for his sharp critical intelligence; he was celebrated for the lucidity of his ideas and his gift for friendship.

In short, he had a life outside writing, whereas your life is an attempt to write. In short, his writing was part of a life, whereas yours is written in lieu of a life. Do you see the difference? It is not difficult? Do you see it? For all that you have prepared yourself, you’ll never be a Joubert just as you’ll never be a Kafka, will you? And you’ll never be a Lawrence nor a Rimbaud, will you? The game’s nearly up, isn’t it? But how old will you have to be before you see it? How old?

You are already fairly old, aren’t you? You’re surprised at how old you are, aren’t you? And it’s not as if it crept up on, age, is it? It’s not as if you were too busy to notice how the years were passing, is it? The years pass; you’re getting older. You lived in a succession of rooms and now you have a flat, don’t you? Years passed; nothing happened; you tried to write and you failed to write, didn’t you, but you wrote nothing, did you? Nothing happened, did it? You failed, didn’t you? But still the sliver of hope, still something in you that is undefeated, isn’t there? How does it survive, in the face of everything?

Joubert welcomed the Revolution, did you know that? He was a Justice of the Peace in the years after the Revolution, did you know that? He was admired for his fairness and his vigilance, did you know that? And he was a man of principle, resigning as a Justice when he felt the Revolution had become too violent, did you know that?

Are you a man of principle? Are you known for the clarity of your ideas? Are you beloved by the best minds in your country? Do your friends urge you to publish a book of your meditations? Will they bring out a volume of pensees compiled from your writings after you die? Can you write in a calm and measured prose? Will your musings be published and then translated into other languages?

You know the answer, don’t you? You know where it’s heading, don’t know? Look at you, staying in and not going out. Look at you tonight, staying in with your moleskine and your computer, staying in having cleared you desk. Look at you, still hoping, still dreaming of the prize. Is that why you’re here, tonight as every other night, ready to begin? And is that why you’ll leave your desk, tonight like every other night, without having written a line? In a child it would be charming, in a young man, romantic, but in a middle aged man? Laughable, and perhaps not even that, not even laughable. Pathetic – is that the word? Contemptible – is that the word?

That’s what you’d like above all: an excuse. Above all, first of all, that’s what you’d like: an excuse to say why you failed to achieve what you might have achieved. To say: I did not achieve it, for this reason, for this excuse. To say: I had 2 children under 5. To say: I was nursing an elderly relative. To say: after the accident, what could I do?

And without children? Without an elderly relative, without an accident? Failure, and that first of all. Failure, full stop, no alibi, full stop. No alibis and no excuses. Only incompetence and laziness. Why did you fail, you who had every chance? Why did you never succeed? Think of all those who could have succeeded in your place! Think of all those who could have achieved everything given the chances you had!

Why did you fail? Why, in the end, did you fail? Do you think it was a question of talent? Do you think it mattered whether or not you had talent? In the end, that is already an excuse, only this time, one no one will believe. What does it matter, whether or not you have talent? When did talent matter? What does it matter, whether you are gifted or not? Because it is a matter of will, and only that. It is a matter of will and of desire, and only that.

Because too much facility is the enemy of the work. Too much talent is already dissipation. To have choice to do this or do that already too much. For there can be no choice; it is not a matter of choice. You either have to or you do not have to. And if you do not have to, then nothing can be done. If there is no ‘you must’ then nothing can be done.

For it can only begin in the teeth of the impossible. In the face of it, the impossible. In the face of the others who tell you it’s the last thing you can do. Only then, when you know it is completely the wrong thing for you to do can you do anything. Only then, when there is no choice, no possibility, but there is only one choice and one possibility can there be a beginning. Only when there is no chance of a beginning can there be a beginning.

Unless you’ve reached the very limit of your talent, nothing. Unless you’ve come right up against the edge of your ability, then nothing. Only inability counts. Only impossibility matters. There are no excuses, though you’d like an excuse. To seek out excuses is already to have failed, don’t you understand that? To seek out excuses is to have failed failure, do you know that? Because to give an excuse is still to want to succeed. To give an excuse is hubris itself, because you claim if it were not for x and for y and for z you would have succeeded. When it is only when you know there are no excuses that it might be possible.

Only when you have passed through any possible nostalgia for success that even anything might begin. No failure, only the failure of failure. No failing and no failure – only the failure of failure. Failure itself must fail, just as the measure of success must fail. Both failure and success are not enough. Only when you fail failure itself might something begin.

Who are they, the ones who’ve failed failure? How to tell them apart from the others, content to succeed or content to fail? I’ll tell you: they never talk about failure, or success. Never will you hear from them talk of failure or success. Never will you hear them celebrate or lament. For they are beyond lamentation or celebration, just as they are beyond failure or success.

What need have they for excuses? What notion have they of talent? They work, and that first of all. They work, not doggedly, not with gritted teeth, but with calm endurance, and that first of all. There is work, they work, they give themselves to their labours, and when they’ve finished for the day, they stop working.

No celebration, no lament. To them, the day means: work, and even if they’ve spent all day in a miserable job, they come home, clear a space and work. No matter that they’ve come in late from the dreariest job, there’s still the work, and they work.  They need no one, only the work.

I know those who work do so without needing to brag about the work. They will speak of their books, it is true, but not the work. They will never speak of it, the work. They barely know of it, the work; they only trust it, without knowing what they trust. Or they know it only by what they write, by the steadiness of their labour.

And you, who can never stop speaking about the work? You, whose life is an endless gibbering about how you failed the work? In the end you are the buffoon of the work, its idiot. In the end, you are the foaming-mouthed prophet who points towards what he cannot know and cannot understand: the work.

1.

Blogging is not a work of time; it is not cumulative; the 24 hours which separates one post from another is enough time to forget what was written and to lose the thought that was conserved by writing. What do I remember, today, of what I wrote yesterday?

To keep a journal is to collaborate with time, returning to its pages to reclaim the events of the day – to reflect, in the wisdom of the evening, on the day’s course. Each of us has grown old by the evening. The morning belongs to youth, and the vigour of youth. The afternoon is long middle age. The journal is always the work of an old person.

What, then, does it mean to write in the morning? What does it mean to write now, when the world is still young and nothing has happened? I am young and should be acting in the world; I am young, and with the vigour of youth, I should be transforming what I find around me, participating in the immense labour of the day. To write now, to reflect now, is premature and wasteful.

Couldn’t these hours, the hours of strength, be used to write something more substantial? Wasted time! Wasted youth, as though I was unemployed before I began! Writing in lieu of action; writing lacking the experience that would substantiate writing – now it is only the ‘nothing is happening’ that asks to be written. Truancy, unemployment – nothing is happening, nothing began. Nothing happened; it failed to begin.

What does it mean to have failed before you tried to succeed? How is it that you failed before you even tested your strength against the day? Perhaps it is that you’ve fallen below failure – perhaps it is failure itself you failed, since you did not even try with your strength to make something of yourself in the world.

Then what success is this, this writing? What kind of success, a writing that can make itself out of a failure that has failed failure? Nothing is happening; this morning is the same as any other. Nothing happens: there is the same back yard, the same plants in the back yard, the same wall of the back yard and the backs of the houses opposite. Nothing happens, and the coffee beside me is cooling and the empty cereal bowl dries in the sink.

2

Today I know I’ve never written a line. I know it, I am sure of it, I’ve never written a line, never completed a sentence, and barely written a word, not even a word.

Begin, do not begin. Begin, fail beginning and the work of beginning. Begin, fail and fail the beginning and the work of beginning. You will not be caught by the beginning; it will not seize you. Do you think you can begin? Do you think you have anything to say and the means by which to say it? Do you think anything can be said, and be said by way of writing?

But you will conserve nothing by writing. You will keep nothing by writing, no memories. Nothing will be kept by writing; never will there have been writing. Never will writing have begun. Never will it have been possible for you: writing. Never writing and only the withdrawal of writing. Never the power to write, and only the withdrawal of the power to write.

You will not begin: that is what writing says to you. You will never begin, and you are barred from beginning, this alone is what is allotted to you: this is what writing says to you. It was given that you could not begin and could give yourself nothing by writing: that is what writing says. It was decreed that you would be able only to destroy by way of writing, and that your way is the way of destruction: writing laughs.

3

It is not that you write with a hammer. It is not that you destroy anything by writing. Rather that writing, in your hands, destroys itself as achievement and as the result of achievement. Rather that writing laughs at itself and arrests itself, lying on the floor. Rather that by your hands writing trips over itself and lies on the ground and laughs at the sky.

In truth, you can destroy nothing just as you can make nothing. Do you think you’ve said anything today? Do you think you’ve said anything by way of writing today, which is a day like any other? What do you think you have done today? I will tell you: nothing has made itself, nothing has substantiated itself. Nothing has enfleshed itself and made itself real. Nothing has given itself a body and made itself real. I will tell you what’s happened: nothing. I’ll tell you what will happened: nothing. You have made writing laugh and laugh at you. You’ve made writing laugh, and you are writing’s buffoon.

First of all you are a buffoon. First of all, the buffoon who can do nothing, write nothing and cannot stop writing. First of all the one who cannot write and cannot not write. First of all, the one committed to the ‘first of all’, the one who would write by way of impossibility. First of all the buffoon, the dunce of writing, the one even writing laughs at, the one even writing makes space for. Laughter: writing is laughing at you, buffoon. That’s your achievement, buffoon, that your tools have fallen from you and laugh at you. Yes, that’s what you have achieved buffoon: the very means of your non-achievement has fallen from you and laughs at you.

Just as you, too, have fallen, buffoon. Just as your place is on floor, buffoon, with the things of failure. On the floor, buffoon, unemployed like the others, and listless like the others. On the floor, as writing laughs at you and you laugh at yourself, buffoon. On the floor, laughing as the world laughs at you and writing laughs at you and you laugh at yourself, buffoon. There is laughter, buffoon, and that first of all. There is laughter, laughter is laughing and writing is writing as it laughs.

4

What will you achieve, buffoon, what will you make? Do you dream of achievement, buffoon, do you dream of success? For you write of failure too often for me to believe in your failure. You write of failure too often and at too great a length for me to believe in your failure. And I know you do not believe in it, buffoon, and isn’t this your buffoonery? I know you do not believe in your failure, buffoon, and that for all you write of it, you still dream of success.

And isn’t that the joke, the final irony? Isn’t the joke that you would still make a work of what cannot succeed, and that you would succeed by way of failure? Isn’t the joke that failure is your means and your procedure, that what you would make and would have made here is a sign of nostalgia? You would be successful, that’s your drama. You would succeed, that’s the whole drama.

For the irony outplays you as the drama outplays you. For it is evident to all what you want to achieve and by way of failure. Evident to all and clear from the first, and clear to all, what you would make by way of failure! Evident to all, and even to you – even you know what you would achieve, and by way of failure! What bad faith! What irony! What buffoonery, the buffoonery of writing!

For you are our fool, writer! You are our fool and we can hear the bells on your cap jingling! Fool! Buffoon! Entertain us! Come to us with your writing and entertain us! Show us what you have written and entertain us! We know you will join in our laughter! We know you, like us, will be swept up by laugher! What laughter there will be, us laughing at you and you laughing at yourself! What laughter that will be heard by the stars and by the darkness on the other side of the stars!

It is noon and you’ve already failed the day. It is noon, the hands of the clock point straight upwards and you’ve already failed the day and failed yourself. But what laughter you have given us in your failure and your cavorting! What laugher you have given us in your dunce’s cap and your bells! Say it again, fool: ‘I am a dead man’. Say it again, fool: ‘I am a dead man’. Say it for us, fool and bring down the sky and the stars: ‘I am a dead man’.

Listen – can you hear it? Listen – strain your ears – can you hear them? Can you hear what they’re saying? You’re an idiot – that’s what they’re saying. You’re an idiot.

Idiot – is that it? Idiot – is that what they’re saying? You can hear them, can’t you? You can hear what they’re saying, can’t you? It’s echoing everywhere. It’s whispering in the wind. Idiot. You’re an idiot.

Everything is telling you this. The stars are telling you this. The full moon is telling you this. The earth, rolling into morning, the silent trees over the houses, the cars parked in the cul-de-sac – it’s the same in each case, the same being said in each case. You’re an idiot.

You’re an idiot, that’s what they’re saying. You’re an idiot: whispered in the night hush. You’re an idiot: the birds who sing by the streetlights. You’re an idiot: it’s cosmic. The universe knows it. Everything knows it and it was known from the first: you’re an idiot.

1.

Is this it, is this all there is? Is this what you’ve been telling me about? Is this your grand design? I expected more from you, I admit it. I expected more, no doubt I was foolish to do so, but what you’ve done is very little. Is this really what you’ve been working on, is this the fruit of your labours? Is it this, is this all there is? Because it is not much. Because when it comes to it, it’s very little. It’s true I expected more of you. It’s true I always had hopes, I always harboured hopes in you, foolish no doubt, misplaced no doubt but I thought, if anyone can do something, it’s him. Yes, I thought you had it in you, I thought you could be more than the others, did you know that?

Did I betray my hopes to you? Did you have some intimation of them? Did you come to understand what I sought in you? Of course not. You were blind to me and blind to everyone. You were young! If I spoke to you, if I took you aside and spoke to you, it was nothing to you. I spoke; you listened; all was well – how could you know that I had picked you out, that I had selected you and thought: yes, he might be capable of something.

You would not believe how I watched you! True, I was away a good deal, I used to take long business trips. I was away, crossing the country one way and then another, but it was of you I used to think on those trips when I thought of our hometown. If anyone is to succeed, it will be him, I thought. Yes, he is the one in whom I place my hopes. Those were the thoughts which came to me in shabby hotel rooms and roadside cafes. So I consoled myself when I thought of our hometown that at least one of us might achieve something.

But what have you achieved? What is it that you’ve done? Is this it, is this all there is? Perhaps I should blame myself. Perhaps I am to blame, I who, alone among others, had watched out for you. Was it my fault, what you’ve done? I knew your face from the other faces. I thought: he is not one of the others, one of the rats. I thought: he isn’t a rat, he isn’t one of the swarm, one of those bodies that climbs on top of other bodies and sniffs the air. I thought: he isn’t one of them, but something else. No, he’s not one of them, even though he goes amongst them. He is there with the rest, but he will achieve something; he has potential.

2.

Even as a child, you had it, that potential. Always your great schemes! Always grand designs! True, you never finished your projects, true, you began with a great enthusiasm that disappeared almost at once. True, those projects went unfinished, your life was littered with great plans and great projects, but you finished nothing, you fell short of what you set yourself. For a time you gathered others around you, other rats; you inspired them. For a time, yes, the rats would crowd round you, excited by your ambition, they would pause from their crawling and their sniffing and look on.

How great your enthusiasm was! How much you dreamt of achieving! But it was not personal ambition which drove you. It wasn’t to be a rat greater than other rats, quite the contrary. It was enthusiasm, pure and simple. It was inspiration, pure and simple. A gust of wind passed through you; your eyes lit up, your mouth opened a little: what was it you’d seen – the future? What had you seen that the rest of us had not seen? And you set to work on your plans, on your projects, and others, enthused, worked around you.

When was that phase over? When did those plans run aground? Is it because you never finished what you began? Is it because you couldn’t quite bear finishing? The others left you, didn’t they? The others returned to their swarming, rat swarming over rat, rat climbing over other rats and sniffing the air, didn’t they? I saw; I’d looked on. What would you do now? Where would you turn, with your enthusiasm? Did it turn inward? Did it hollow out something inside you? Is that what I saw in the dulling of your eyes? Is that I saw in your distraction?

You were still young, weren’t you? You still had youth on your side, didn’t you? But something had changed, hadn’t it? Your enthusiasm changed direction, hadn’t it? It had changed direction, your enthusiasm, in retreat from the world, hadn’t it? What was happening to you? Could I see it? Could I tell, or was I fooling myself? Could I tell, or was it because I wanted to place hope in hope, in youth, in your youthfulness, in the capacity to begin?

What could I see? What did I want to see by the dulling of your eyes? What did I want to see by way of your retreat? In those days, I began my journeys. In those days, so long ago, I took a job that required I criss-cross the country as a sales representative for my company. It’s true I saw little change in you when I came home after my journeys. No sooner was I home than I set off once again, but still I kept tabs on you, still I welcomed news of you.

What was it that you were planning? What great plan were you hatching? True, you were still young, but you would not be young forever. True, you were young, you were still young, but that time was coming to an end, the time of youth was coming to an end. And how was it by the thought of this ending that I began to hope? Was it the ending of your youth in which I placed my hope? He is planning something, I thought to myself. Deep in his soul, something is happening; somewhere inside, the Great Work is beginning. Yes, something will happen, and probably at the moment he leaves his youth behind. Something will happen at the threshold, and as he crosses the threshold; then it will begin, and only then. How magnificently he will announce his adulthood! With what greatness will he step forth from youth to adulthood!

It’s true I was away during much of this period, driving on motorways and eating in roadside cafes; it’s true I heard little when I was away, and slept when I returned – but didn’t I hear stories? Didn’t I hear of your concentratedness and your silences? Didn’t I hear of your retreat and your solitude? What was it you were doing? What is it you were you planning?

You cast aside your old friends – was this a sign? You stayed in your room night and day – was this a sign? The world turned; years passed and I heard me you were working. Years passed – what happened to you? The others moved up in the world, and you stayed where you were. Years passed; the others went on to success or failure, but you stayed where you were, where you had always been, in one room or another, in a room that was always the same room. Years passed, and what was happening? The threshold had been crossed and what was happening?

You were old now – there was no question of that. No longer a youth – no question of that. And what had you done? What had you achieved? You were old, the threshold behind you and youth behind you, and even a few years of adulthood behind you, and what had you done? What of the great work that had filled your days and nights? Years passed; I, too was older. I was older; I had aged; that was expected. But you – for you to have aged, what did that mean? For you to have aged without producing the Great Work, what did that mean?

3.

Then, the other day, I ran into you in the street. Did I run into you, or was it you who sought me out? We ran into one another and you, who had never acknowledged me, told me you’d send me something.Yes, I saw you, you had never sought me out, who knew me only as one among others, as a friendly face among other faces, came to me and spoke. I was concerned; I thought: it’s too late, it’s too late in the day, the world has turned, and it’s too late for him to speak to me – for him – for you – to address one to whom he had never spoken. When you spoke and said you’d send me something, I thought: it’s too late for him, it’s too late for me and God knows it’s too late for the world. You spoke to me, you who had never addressed me, who had barely addressed anyone, and I thought: what’s happened? Have we all grown old? Has the world grown old? Is it really over? Has it come to this?

Did we meet by chance? I was crossing from one side of the road and you the other, but when you spoke to me of what you had been doing I thought: it’s too late, it’s already too late, he knows it’s too late and I know it’s too late. When you spoke, I thought: he, too, must know it’s too late; he, too, must know he’s been working without beginning and without a hope of beginning. You spoke and I thought, he must know it’s taken too long, that’s it’s taken too long without anything done, he must know he is too old, too old for one has never begun and is still trying to begin.

I thought: he must know I’ve been watching him and asking after him. He must know I had hopes for him. I thought: at last he has spoken to me, at last he has singled me out from the others just as I singled him out, but it is too late now and that he approached me is a sign of decline. I thought: after all this time, after his long silence and his long concentratedness, that he must look to me now is already a sign of failure. That he should seek me out, that he should address me, when it was I who had hoped to be addressed by way of his work, when I had lived to be so addressed and in the hope of such an address is a sign of failure.

That he should address me is already wrong. He to me, and not I who had been addressed by his work, his great work that would have reached me by other channels, his work that would simply have arrived, while he, on the other side of town was doing he knows what – he to me, and not I, among others, to him, as the triumphant author of the work that would crown this town like a fiery halo! He to me – this is wrong; it means there is no work, that there never was a work, that the Great Work was botched and unbegun – that the work was never brought to the verge of the beginning!

He to me – already disaster, disaster for the first, disaster for him who had spent so many years working without working, and disaster for me, who had waited for his work, not for him, but for his work, for the great work that would write itself with his fingers, I who would have been content merely to pass him in the street, to pass him in the knowledge of what he had achieved! Content merely to pass him, to occupy the same street as him, he who had achieved what the rest of us had failed to achieve, he who was not part of the rats and the swarming of rats, he who had lifted himself from the rats and from our town of rats!

I thought: he knows that to acknowledge me is a sign of his ruin. Look at him now! Look what’s become of him! He is old, like me. We are both old, and this is the tragedy. It’s not our world anymore, and this is the tragedy. He is old and I am old, I thought, and there are other young people now, others in whom we should place our hopes, and that is the tragedy. He knows it and I know it; that he approached me is a sign it’s already over for him and for his generation as it was over for me and for my generation.

He should know he’s failed, why does he pretend? Too many years have passed; why does he pretend? He’s crossed the threshold, and there’s nothing between him and death, why does he pretend? His potential is exhausted, he’s out of time. Once I asked questions after him and awaited news about him; once it was I who sought news, and now? I believe he sought me out, that he waited for me; that he waited on the street knowing it was my habit to pass that way in the street. He sought me out, waiting outside on the street just as I would sometimes discreetly follow him. Only he was without discretion. Only he was without shame. Only he addressed me.

It’s over – botched, he never began and now it’s too late to begin. Out of time, having never begun. Out of time and out of it from the first. How could he have begun? How could I ever have thought he might begin? How could I have thought our town could throw up a Creator, a Genius, a Worker of the Great Work, a Dreamer of the Grand Design?

4.

And when I received what you sent me, a few mornings after? When I received a few pages from you, stuffed in an envelope, a few days after? When the envelope came, pressed through my letter box, not a few days later? When it came, the A4 envelope, not thick but thin – when it came, not via the Royal Mail but by your own hand, brought by you on your own legs, brought by one who had walked up my garden path, who had opened the gate and come up my front garden path, when you brought it to my letterbox and slid it through, when, through the letterbox of one whom you had scarcely known and scarcely acknowledged until that time? When I found the envelope on my doormat after a few days away, when I reached down and picked it up and placed it, fearing the worse, among a pile of unopened mail on the desk in my study? When I finally opened it, the envelope, and took out the few sheets of typewritten paper it contained?

I thought, there’s nothing of merit, nothing of value; everything  he’d written was already exhausted. Nothing of merit, nothing done, didn’t he know it? How could you have sent me this? How could he have sought my approval for this? He should have burnt it. Should have thrown it away. Those pages were an affront! An affront to me and to him and to my waiting and to his promise! An affront and embarassment to what he had worked for and what I had waited for! A mockery of my hopes and his hopes and the hopes of our town!

Was this it, I thought? Was this all there was? After all those years? After all those days and nights indoors? After all those days and nights in one room after another, feverishly working? Why hadn’t he given up? Didn’t he know his time had passed? Didn’t he know he’d had his chance? Why hadn’t he settled down like the others? Why hadn’t he settled down into the long afternoon of life like the others?

He needn’t have joined the rats, it is true, I thought – he could have settled down among the others, needn’t have lived with another and bred with another, and from time to time come to the study that he had never had and riffle through a few pages in the draw of the bureau he had never had and typed on the laptop he had never had – could have played for a few idle hours with the accroutements of writing, which he had never had and never needed, which only old men like me have and needed to have. But still he should have given up and put the manuscript aside. Still, years ago, he should have given up and put aside the manuscript. Years ago, and long before now, he should have put aside the manuscript aside as he put his childish things aside, should have put it aside and given up his hopes and placed them in another.

Is this it, I said to myself, is this all there is? Is this how it ends? For something has ended for me, too. Something is over for me, who had lived only to wait. I, too, have finished as my hopes have finished. It is over for me as it is over for him. Over, having never begun. Over, having spun itself from childish dreams and childish delusions. Over, having finally revealed itself in its true guise, which is to say in no guise at all.

Will I see him now, an old man among old men? Will we speak commonplaces as old men among old men, he in whom I’d placed my hopes and he who had destroyed them? Will he speak of his regrets and of what he had given up for a foolish dream? Will he smile over a life lived in a succession of rooms instead of a life with a wife and a life with children? And will we smile together over what we hoped for in spite of our town, of a writing and a waiting in spite of our town and in the face of our town?

But perhaps I was wrong; perhaps I picked the wrong one. And perhaps you, too, picked the wrong one. Perhaps this is the wrong time and the wrong epoch; perhaps we both missed the appointment we wanted to keep – perhaps it missed us both and passed us by. Was it our fault? Was it our failure? Was it the rats swarming over one another, one rat climbing over another and sniffing the air and then another rat coming to sniff the air?

In truth, it was our fault and our failure, and anything else is a lie. In truth, we were the ones who failed, he by writing and I by waiting, and this is what binds us together. Failure, redoubled failure, the failure of one and then the failure of the other: failure and without excuse and without mitigation. No excuse, no extenuating factors, only failure. No excuses, no mitigating circumstances, failure pure and simple.

Subtracted life, life subtracted. Life minus life: what did I do this Sunday? What happened yesterday? I would like to have written, but that’s not what I did. I would have liked to have written, but I wrote nothing. I wrote nothing – but it was also that all I did was to wait to write something. Nothing happened, twice over: there was no writing and there was nothing done while waiting for writing. What happened? Nothing, twice over. What happened? Nothing, once and again.

I had an espresso. Half an espresso after lunch. And waited for the caffeine to cross the blood brain barrier. And waited for the caffeine hit, and the rash that opens on my hand. Caffeine and then the rash, because it is toxic. Caffeine, drank in order to write, drank in order to work, is also toxic, whence the rash on the heel of my palm.

Espresso – just a half, but that was enough. Eggs benedict and espresso for breakfast, and then work, I said to myself, then writing. Espresso and eggs benedict, and then it can begin. What happened? Nothing – twice over. Nothing redoubled. No writing, and then a whole day in which ‘no writing’ devoured the day. Life minus life. Subtracted life.

Before the day, nothing, and after the day nothing. And the day nothing, nothing could began. Then there was espresso. Caffeine was to cross the blood-brain barrier. It crossed. What began? Nothing began. The day, which was wearing past three o’clock, was already over. Nothing began. Everything was over. Then there was the caffeine, which made nothing happen more intensely. Nothing happened, but more intensely. Life minus life, but more intensely. Life subtracted itself from life, but more intensely. What happened? Nothing, but more intensely. I surfed the net more intensely. I read idly more intensely. I wandered around town more intensely. I thought about working, more intensely. I did nothing, but more intensely.

I read an article about caffeine in The Observer. It said scientists were divided as to whether its effects was adverse. I read the article more intensely. I read the stupid paper more intensely. I thought about how stupid it was more intensely. Meanwhile, nothing happened. There was no writing, nothing done, and nothing happened while I did not write.

Other people in the world were at D.I.Y superstores. Other people in the world were reading papers in cafes. Other people were on weekend breaks to Antwerp. Other people were gathering ingredients to cook a big meal. Others were walking hand in hand round the shops. Couples were walking hand in hand up and down the river. Others were wandering through the art gallery.

I wasn’t working in the office. Nothing was happening in the office. Everything was happened everywhere but the office. The world was turning everywhere but in the office. The afternoon was progressing nicely everywhere but in the office. Everything was happening everywhere except the office. The office was where nothing was happening. I was waiting for something to happen, but nothing was happening.

Nothing was happening while I waited for something to happen. Nothing began, nothing began to begin, it was finished from the first, the day’s destiny was mapped out from the first and it was finished from the first. Nothing was to happen and nothing happened. Everything was happening everywhere else, the weather was getting milder, I opened the window, it was a mini-Spring, couples walked up and down in town, couples walked up and down along the river, everything was happening except in the office, where nothing was happening.

What was happening in the office? Nothing. I was waiting for something to happen, but nothing was happening. Eggs Benedict, which I’ve never had before in my life, espresso, which I have very sparingly, and then nothing. Only nothing happened more intensely. As the caffeine crossed the blood-brain barrier, nothing happened very quickly.

I surfed the net, but no one had updated. I surfed, nothing had happened, I was the only one surfing in the world, everyone was outside, except for me, who was inside. There was only the outside, where everyone was enjoying themselves, and me in the office, who was not enjoying himself.

Eggs benedict, eggs in Hollandaise sauce on a muffin. Eggs, sauce, muffin, then espresso. Eggs benedict, eggs, sauce, muffin and a long herb-blade across the the benedict. 1) Eggs benedict (should benedict be capitalised?), 2) espresso. 1) Eggs benedict, made of i) eggs, ii) Hollandaise sauce (should hollandaise be capitalised?) and a long blade of some herb, I don’t know which one, probably a chive, then 2) espresso.

Only half an espresso, but already too much. I had had an elderflower presse, thinking I wouldn’t have an espresso, but then it came it upon me, I wanted an espresso, I wanted to work, I wanted to get something today, I thought: it would be nice if I got something done today. 1) Elderflower presse, 2) eggs benedict, 3) espresso, and I thought, I’ll get something done today, I’ll write something, but in fact I wrote nothing. In fact, nothing was written, nothing was done, the whole world was doing something, but I was doing nothing.

Lone chive across three eggs, served yolk intact, three eggs, in a row on a muffin – was it a muffin?, or was it a long piece of bread, a long half-roll? Long chive, and then sauce, and then eggs, below the sauce. The sauce, made of eggs, on the eggs. Plenty of eggs, first of all in the Hollandaise sauce, of which I know nothing, except that it was made of eggs, and the eggs themselves, three of them, in a row, yolks intact, white intact, no spillage, no messiness, and the half roll below, toasted.

I took my knife and cut the surface of an egg. I cut the surface – yolk ran into the white and into the Hollandaise sauce. Then my espresso, a taste of espresso. Then it was the turn of my espresso, which had arrived in a little but, as espressos should, but I knew not to drink too much. Then the espresso, I drank half of it, and thought: I’ll be able to work now. I drank the espresso, having drunk an Elderflower presse, and thought: I’m in a position to work, I’ve had a good breakfast, all I need do is go back to the office, and I can begin.

I went back to the office. Everything was in place. Leaving late last night, I’d tidied u; everything was ready; there was no excuse. The office: pristine, and here I was, full of eggs benedict and half-an-espresso, and ready to begin, no excuse. And do you know what I did? Do you know what I did? I wanted to write, but I wrote nothing. I tried to write; I failed, my head was full of nothing, and I could not begin.

Do you know what happened? Nothing. There was 1) the desire to write, and 2) no writing whatsoever. Doubly disappointed. Disappointed once and then again. First the desire to write, and then thwarted desire, nothing written. To write, then not to write, thwarted desire, nothing began, and nothing happened. It was happening everywhere in the world except here, where it was not happening.

Nothing, then nothing. The desire to write, then nothing. It was a mini Spring outside, but nothing was happening inside. Stains on the windows, and nothing was happening. The plants watered, the office tidy, but nothing was happening. Everything was happening except something. Something was what was not happening. In fact, nothing was happening, and nothing was beginning.

Others would have abandoned the day; others would have bailed out, but I am no quitter. Others would have quit, but I thought, the caffeine will get through the blood brain barrier pretty soon. I thought: soon enough, the caffeine will move from the bloodstream to the nervous system, and so it did. Hours passed, and caffeine had passed from blood to brain, from vein to nerve, and there it was. Only nothing began. Only nothing happened, more intensely.

Subtracted life, life minus life. Life not yet life, life unwavering non-life. Life without distraction, life without achievement, life subtracted. Do you know what I did? Nothing. Do you know what I did while waiting for nothing? Nothing. Nothing once and nothing twice; nothing happened.

I looked around for someone to blame. What, was this life? Was this how it was supposed to be? Was it life I was living? What, was this what living was about? How, I thought, had I taken the wrong turn? How had I ended up here, with the heel of my palm itching? How here, with an itchy palm-heel and nothing happening?

What is this bland contentedness? The last thing I expect to experience is bland contentedness, and the satisfaction of a job well done. Absolutely no desire to write, not here, nor elsewhere. No desire whatsoever. No misery, and therefore no hope of the ‘merciful surplus’ that would lift me out of misery by giving me writing.

Too content to search around in my memory for another of the great list of humiliations. Write an anti-‘esteem indicators’ said W., referring to that section of the R.A.E. form where you write about your invitations to speak at conferences, the number of articles published etc. Write indicators of your humiliation, said W., write how you dragged yourself down and dragged others down. W. is thinking of himself. Write about that bloke who says I’ve been going downhill since I started hanging round with you, he says.

Write about that says W., and I told him I thought of that a long time ago, but I’m too content, life is pleasant, all is well, there’s nothing in me that wants expunging, there’s nothing that asks to be written, there’s not the eternal return of memories of old humiliations. All is well, the light falls equally on everyone. All well, the light falls gently on each and on me as one of the others. I detest this contentedness and everything written out of contentedness. I hate even-handedness and patience.

Where is it, the old misery? Where is the old misery and the old desire for the ‘merciful surplus’? I could certainly count on that, the old misery. In the morning, there was always the old misery. Rising, I thought, there it is again, the old misery, so I’d better have a coffee and write about the old misery. Yes, that’s how it was up until a few days ago, up in the morning, another day, white and bland, so I go into the kitchen to make coffee and turn on the computer and open up the ‘Post Introduction’ box.

Until a few days ago, yes, not so long ago, that was the beginning of my day, always early, always too early, because I wake up too early, I can never help that, I never sleep well along, I’m always up too early, and then I think, I might as well begin, and I go and make coffee. Up early, too early, making coffee in the dawn, making coffee in the half-light, there’s the yard, the ugly little yard, and my damp little kitchen with great patches of damp on the walls and damp in the air.

Yes, first thing, up and to the damp kitchen and then coffee and the same old misery, the same happy misery, because it is always the beginning of something, because from misery, there is at least the peculiar energy of disgust. Out of misery, yes, there is the need to give disgust its head, to allow it to find its target, its object, and to set it on its way. From the first, misery, the same old misery, and then the desire, by writing, to give disgust its target and unleash disgust and let it run by writing to its target. The old misery, the old disgust, and then the quarry it tears apart. Joy of that tearing apart. Joy that misery will allow humiliations to arise from the past. Joy that there are always other reasons to feel excluded.

Yes, that’s how it was, day after day, week after week, the evening and night spent in the pub and the next morning, wake up too early, the old misery and the desire to escape that misery, but always the faith in that escape, which passes by way of disgust. In the morning, arise, misery, then disgust, then writing, then the happiness of having written, then the happiness that misery had been put to work.

First of all, misery, bountiful misery, the riches of misery. From the first, misery, reliable, dependable as it bore within it a kind of energy. Nothing better than that first, energetic misery, disgust tugging at the leash, coffee by the window, computer on, Post Introduction opened, then disgust unleashed, disgust running to tear its quarry apart. Disgust off the leash, off by writing to tear its quarry apart. Beatitude of disgust, beatitude of misery. Beatitude of misery-writing and disgust-writing.

But today, contentedness; today, a new tranquility, there’s no need to write, nothing asks to be written, there’s no disgust. Today, no disgust, except that I’ve worked up because there is no disgust. No disgust except at the absence of disgust. No disgust except that there is no disgust, only contentedness, that vile, stupid contentedness in league with the vile stupidity of the world. No disgust to carry me from sentence to sentence and from paragraph to paragraph. No bridge across the morning.

Already I’m failing, already, the post is giving way as I write. Find your way to the end, I tell myself, find the end. You can always do that, you know it’s coming, but you’re not there yet, not this morning, I tell myself. Find the end of the post, I tell myself, it’s not far off, but find it by way of writing and the energy of writing. The end is there, waiting to be written, but only as it was born at the inception of writing. The end was there, but you’ll discover it only by writing, by impatience. For the way opens by impatience and disgust.

Impatience and disgust, that’s how it opens, that’s how it begins and how it is carried forward. Impatience, disgust, so does the bridge open, so does sentence bear to sentence and paragraph leap across blank space to paragraph. That’s how it begins, leaning out of itself, depending on itself, trusting only disgust, launched in misery and calling out to misery. But contentedness is creeping back. Contentedness is holding out against misery.

If it’s not written in one sweep, it’s no good, I know that. If it’s not written in one single movement, in a single gesture, it’s failed, I know that. A single gesture, given out of itself, given in writing by disgust, otherwise nothing. No pauses, no let-up, no surfing, no breakfast, no brushing of teeth and no showering, none of that. It’s dawn and time to work, and work is everything, disgust must be unleashed. No getting up to wander around, no television, no food, just an empty stomach and bile.

Write about the history of your humiliations, says W. Write your humiliation-indicators, says W. Write about that, says W., and whine, I like it when you whine. But my memory is not working. My disgust does not roam into my memory, looking for humiliations. No quarry for memory. Nothing for disgust to seek and destroy. No cross-hairs on the quarry. Write about your humiliations, says W. Write about dragging the rest of us down, says W. I’ve lost it, I say. Oh yeah, says W., what did you have?

The old misery, the old discontent, the old disgust and the bounty of disgust. You’ll never understand it, I tell W. You just don’t get it, I tell W. Who do you think you are, says W., Thomas Bernhard? Why do you do it, you’re not Thomas Bernhard, says W. What, so you think you’re Thomas Bernhard now? That’s funny. Write about your humiliations. Write about dragging the rest of us down. That’s what I was planning, I told W., I thought of it straightaway. But I can’t get going, I’m too content.

Conversation with K. Should we think of leaving, of giving up? We earn so little and for what? It is not as if what we do is creative. It’s not as if what we do is in any way creative. His book has sold 224 copies. Mine, he thinks, something similar. If you sell 400 copies in two years, it will go into paperback. Paperback, I think to myself, that’s the last thing I want. Paperback! Then the humiliation would be complete, I think to myself, then humiliation would complete itself. Then would I be linked to every bookshop that carried the book, I think to myself, then would be bound to wherever the book appeared as by a thousand spider threads.

What have I written?, What did I write? Excuses, you come up with hundreds of them, every kind of excuse. I was writing under constraint, you tell yourself, how could I do otherwise? I had no time, you tell yourself, and no opportunities, how could I do otherwise? I had no leave of absence, no stretch of time, I had too much administration, there was too much bureaucracy, you say, I hadn’t time enough, I wasn’t educated enough, I wasn’t taught enough grammar, I wasn’t taught how to write a well formed sentence, I wrote in a rush, I wrote too quickly, I had no time for revision, the copy editor didn’t revise my book, the proof reader missed all the typos, how could I do otherwise?

Hundreds of excuses, none of them plausible. Hundreds of excuses, but you are your own victim, it’s your fault, how could it be otherwise, what else could have happened, it was your fate, it was necessity, it was known in advance, you were born to write badly, prepared to write badly, everything in your life pointed to that, every prior failure prepared you for that, you had all the signs, all the evidence and how could you have expected otherwise. You knew it was coming, you were prepared in advance, but you still hoped, hope burned in you despite everything that was done in advance to crush hope. How could you have hoped it turned out different? How could it have turned out but the way that it did? How could it have happened otherwise? You knew, you knew, your life failed in advance, it had already failed, and how could the book be anything but failure?

What hope you had, what youth, was illusion. You were old before you born, hopeless before you could hope, unfree before you dreamt of freedom. Nothing was possible for you from the first. Why did you hope? What was hope in you? Your hope means nothing, it’s absurd, it laughs at itself, hope laughs at itself in you, what hope opens it also closes, what it makes possible it makes impossible from the first. No, there was no hope, not from the first and even before the first. Before anything was possible, it was impossible. Before it began, it could not begin. Hope rotted in you. Hope laughed at itself in you, that was your youth, but then it stopped laughing. Then, trapped, hope went mad.

Didn’t you always take corruption for innocence, senscence for youth? Didn’t you take the end for the beginning, the failure for the deed? You mistook one thing for another, and your life is this mistake. Your hope is a mistake and your life is a mistake. One thing does not lead to another, one thing leads nowhere, it is always a misstep. The first step was a misstep. Faux pas from the first. False steps, wrong steps, pseudo-steps.

You thought you could step forwards, but this was denied you. You thought you could begin, that there was a place from which to begin, but this was denied you. Only the non-place from which nothing could begin. Botched, from the first. Chanceless, from the first. You would live belatedly, after the disaster. You lived after the catastrophe, not before it. The shipwreck of your life. The storm from which nothing issues. The turning of nothing in nothing. Defeat, from the first, and from before the beginning.

Why did you think you could write? Why did you think writing was possible for you? True, you surrounded yourself with books, you read, you spent days and nights reading. You wanted nothing but time to read. But as you read, you dreamt of books you would write. Why did you overstep the mark? Why did you think writing was possible for you? Why this mistake, this overreaching? Why did you suppose you could add another book to those shelves? Why did you think you could finish a book, and place it up among the others? Why did you suppose the bookshelf would make a space for your surname, for your first name, that the Library of Congress would prepare an entry for what you had written, and that your hardbacked book could be borrowed as other books might be borrowed from the British Library?

Oh, I know your secret, I know your false modesty, I know you wanted to slip a book into the library, to write your book and have it published and then to find it tucked between all the other books in the library. Yes, to have found tucked in between other books surreptitiously, as if it had always been there. As though it had grown there, as though it had sown itself, long before you appeared. As though it had materialised from the other books around it. You thought it was your due, your reward. But you thought, at the same, that it was a modest reward, that you were asking for very little. But in truth, you were asking too much. In truth, you wanted too much from the start. In truth, you were too hopeful, you always were, and you should have understood that the library is the place you cannot be even though the library stretches around you, and all you can think of are books and of writing a book. Even though the library is the wall around your whole life, and your life will have been lived in the same library.

Did you really think it was possible for you to write? Did you dream you could join others in writing? Did you really think it was possible for you to write, for you of all people, for you who never had a chance, who was never given a chance, who never could have had a chance, who could never have begun, whose was made not to begin but to fail to begin, who was made so that beginning was impossible? Still you dreamed of beginning. Still, then the dream of beginning, still you were young enough to think it would all begin, that life was around the corner, that a new life could be lived, that your life would change.

But you know that you will always be here, that the same will happen over again, and you will never add a book to the library. You know that library is like the forest which will not admit you, that it says, in advance, that your books will not be kept here, that there will be no books nor even the hope of writing them, that every step is a false step, a step untaken, a step untakeable, a step for others to take, but not for you, that this is all there is and all there will be, you surrounded by books as you were always surrounded, you for whom books were a great deal, but who also dreamed of adding your own book to those many books, to write, to have written a book, to find a book with your name on it among other books, to come across your own book as if by chance, as if you had had nothing to do with it, as if you had not written it, as if it had just appeared, as if it had grown by itself, as if it came together by chance one night in the library, born from your dreams, born from all you wanted and all your life was not, born from the nothingness of your life which in truth was never lived, born from the negation of your life, from all that it was not, made from your failures, made from what you could not do, from what was never possible for you, from what would never be possible.

Who were you to drift into into the library without identification, to come through the turnstile, unnoticed, anonymous, no doubt taken for a student among other students, who went up the stairs until he found the third floor, until he found himself by chance between the books on literature and the books on philosophy? Who were you non-student, interloper, who crept into the library in the belief he had a place there, thinking he could take his place at the desks with other readers, with a pile of books and with his notepad, writing like the others around him, those who had a reason to be there? Who were you to to copy into his notepad great chunks of the books he was reading, copying fervently not to understand these books, but to be borne by those books into his own writing, in the hope of being so carried and so transported, copying not just books, but the idea of writing, of living to write, dreaming that if such and such a book could be published, then why couldn’t he, too, write a book like that and publish a book like that?

Why not?, you thought, why can’t I do the same?, you thought, why can’t I write from my life and transform that life?, why can’t I find my way back to that place where life should have begun and live again, you thought, but what you didn’t understand was that the library was your tomb, and what began there would also end there, that it had already ended even as it began, that the library was not Ussy-sur-Marne, that it was not the room between the bedroom and the bathroom in the flat in Prague, that it was not the upstairs room in Eze-la-Village, that it was not the rue Saint-Benoit in Paris, but the opposite of all those places, that writing was not possible there but impossible, that writing ruled itself out then and there, even before it began, that writing was ruled out for you, and especially for you, that it was your destiny not to write, that what was necessary was your non-writing, that the fate allotted to you meant the impossibility of writing and nothing other than that impossibility, that the path was blocked, that the way was impossible and no way would be cleared, that you might as well give up since writing had given you up, might as well throw it all in, even as you knew that this ‘might as well’ was impossible for you and that just as you could not write, could not begin writing, it was your fate to run up against the inability to write, that in truth you were nothing other than that inability as it ran up against itself, that there was no chance, no options, and you would always run up against the same wall, again and again against the same wall, never learning, always returning, always fighting your way back, but what for, always to that same wall without a door, to that featureless wall against which you had to break your head over and again?

Tuesday evening. I had said to myself, since summer is over, it’s time to work in my evenings, and so I am here at my desk, back in the flat, watching the news. It’s only 7.00, but the sun has set. I have Josipovici’s In A Fertile Land beside me, and files with complete electronic versions of texts by and Deleuze open in other windows.

I should begin, but I’m too tired to begin. K. said he’s too tired in the evenings to work. Perhaps, he said, it’s because of his children. But he’s exhausted now even though he was once able to work. Not keen to work, perhaps, but able to work. Have we peaked? I ask K., and he laughs, was that it? Was that all it came to? But why should we have hoped that it would come to anything?

Intelligence is not enough. A modicum of education is not enough. The support of friends is not enough, but what would be enough? A culture saturated in philosophy, perhaps, a culture where philosophy is valued, where thought is everywhere, where everyone would think for themselves. No, that would not be enough, for there have been philosophers in societies indifferent to philosophy.

Some philosophers preferred that indifference; it allowed them to work in silence. Without speaking, with no need to speak, to answer to others, to rush to conclusions, they thought and wrote in peace. What need had they of a society that recognise their place, which allotted them a place? They thought and they wrote; sometimes they read; sometimes they walked out of their houses and into town, but always they were thinking and always the silence of their fellow bus passengers on matters philosophical was propitious.

Sometimes, imagine it, they would open their notebooks in cafes, scribbling a few notes, looking into the near distance, scribbling some more. Yes, these are my fantasy-philosophers, writing without publication, speculating in silence, not even waiting for a time when their thoughts could be shared. Writing, filling notebooks, but not even patiently – not even with the dream their thoughts would be published, not even dreaming of a future in which their name would be known.

What need would they of fame? What need did they have to see their words in print? Without masters (they were taught by no one but themselves) and without pupils (what pupils could they seek, the ones who were indifferent to everything but thought?), without friends with whom they could escape their thoughts (drinking, eating, enjoying the fruits of life) or with whom they could share them (conversation, correspondence, exchange of papers), they had no need but thought, the need thought had given them. The need thought has for itself.

But what would be enough for us, for us to think? Something else, some merciful surplus of strength, something – but what? – that lifted our eyes from our books, that looked back at us, something that interrupted our reading and our writing, something that addressed us and changed us. Ah, our friends would have seen we had changed! We would have changed, would have been surrounded by a soft light, our faces would glow, our laughter would become lighter, our movements more graceful!

How can I fail to think of Kierkegaard’s Knight of Faith, indiscernible from the rest of us even as he passes among us! Passing, yes, but changed, changed from inside, radiant, for those with eyes to see it, profound, for those with ears to listen! But we have not changed, alas. We pass with all the others and are just like all the others; we see all they see and speak as they speak. All the while wanting to be transformed. All the while waiting for that merciful surplus that would make thinking at last possible, that would allow a thought to be born in us as it comes from outside, the thought from outside inside us, setting us on fire from within, shining from our eyes and in our words.

One day I would like to think. One day. But I know it is too late. When was it, the day I missed my appointment with thought? When was that day – how old was I? Seventeen, perhaps, like Schelling, sixteen like Shankara – eighteen like Serres, or nineteen like Deleuze? Years pass. Soon, I will be too old for that great age – thirty-seven – when Heidegger published Being and Time and Hegel The Phenomenology of Spirit! But in truth, I am writing of a thought – of that thought that would precede all books, that thought that, as it happens, would set itself back inside me, retreating from my present into the past in which it would shelter itself.

Thought, star, buried not in my past, but in a past into which I will be henceforward set, bound by an excess of memory, a hypermnesis, by that thought that would remember itself in me, drawing me to it, pulling me up to its level, summoning me to itself and granting me its measure. Happy thought that would be like fate! Joyful thought that would grant me a life lived in the quietness of thought! There with me always, waiting for me, ahead of me, calling me ahead, giving me a future as the future of thinking, drawing me from the past into the future and allowing me to write to the future, to set down untimely thoughts, to think for another generation, for those not yet born, for thinkers yet to come, to fire an arrow forward for another thinker to pick up, just I had picked up the arrows of thinkers before me (happy the ones who know community in the thoughts of those long dead and in anticipation of thinkers to come! Happy that solitude filled with thought and with the knowledge that there are other thinkers)!

Once, I met one, a thinker, we spoke and I remember how marvellously he said, my thoughts are interesting but I’m not interesting. Marvellous because he knew he was a receptacle of thought, that thought had given itself to him, that he had been vouchsafed a destiny that was not, in some sense, his, that he lived in lieu of thought, behind it, attempting to catch up with it, sometimes capable of thinking, sometimes not, but always with the bliss of having had thought, of thought having been given to him, of having written from thought, of having written from what was given. We spoke. He said, I’m not interesting, but my book is interesting. Modest shell! Modest nova-husk, as if the thought had voided and exploded him, as though he were nothing extraordinary without thought, as though he were in lieu of the one he was once allowed to be, as though, ordinary, prosaic, here before me, he were no one at all but one whom thought had deigned to touch!

I would like to think, of course, of course. I would like to carry around my neck my version of the amulet Pascal wore in which he had folded that scroll on which he had set down details of his religious vision. I would like my journal to cry out the joy! joy! joy! Kierkegaard wrote in his at the age of twenty-seven. And if it never happens – as it will not – that I am one day given to thinking? If it never comes? Patience is not enough; nor is impatience. It cannot be expected; you cannot demand that it comes, like a genie who would grant you three wishes. Rather that thought will summon you to it, that you would be the genie from which things would be commanded! But I will never be that genie, I say to myself. I will never know what it is to be commanded. What, then? I cannot call myself a failure, for this would make an idol of that success to which thought is indifferent.

I have not failed thought, for thought has not been given to be to fail. How can I fail what was never mine? Could I say I failed what I thought thought might be? Another idol – but one, I think, speaks a kind of truth. The evening that spreads indifferently around me (it is 7.50, night; the news is ending) is, I know, the opposite of thought. Whatever thought will be, it is not this, and I am not its thinker. But what do I know of thought, I who know only what it is not? Curse and blessing: I have a sense of what thought is not, but not of what thought might be. The poisoned gift: I know that others think, and what it means that they think. I know the difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary, know, that is, the bounty others carry inside them, even though they appear like husks whom thought has exploded. Poisoned gift: I know thought has not set out to reach me from the other side of the universe. I know others see in me some light of the thought of others, that I glow not like the sun, but with the reflected light of the moon. But to be a sun – what would that mean? To think and to experience the destiny of thought!

I was taught by old men; old men surrounded me. They spoke of truth tables and chalk covered their backs and I thought: I am not as bright as they are. I thought I had come up against the roof of my intelligence. I’ve gone as far as I can, I said to myself, and then: their world is not mine. I sold my books; the sky closed over me. If I couldn’t go up, I would have to move sideways – but what course was open to me?

I met versions of the same old men in the companies where I worked. They’d had their chance, spread their wings, coasted gently as wages increased and house prices increased and their permanent jobs ran on and up in the world they floated. I thought: I am not like them. Where can I move? Falling from that world, crawling along in unemployment, I went to the Job Centre, and there were more old men. I said: I’ll do anything, and they said, anything? and sent me on a course to prepare me for anything.

The sky had closed over me and a circle had been drawn around me. Old men were everywhere. And when I returned to the university? The same old men, only I was learning they were not so bright. I had thought, I am hollow, and now I knew they were hollow. I thought I carried a void at my heart and I knew that they, too, bore the same void. We are dead men, I said to myself, and the world is hollow. They are dead, but they don’t know it; I am dead, and know it well.

I wrote a book and it looked up at me and said, everything finishes with me. You do not believe in me, said the book. I said, the old world no longer believes in itself. Now chalk covers my back and I speak of truth tables and the ones I teach will say: there is an old man, his world is not mine.

You are prolific, you write too much; you squander your time and your resources; you are educated, but you do nothing with your education. What is more grotesque than writing about writing, about your own inadequacies with respect to writing at the time of the new atrocity at Fallujah, the theocratic madness in the States?

You’ve turned writing into a petty narcissism. It’s worse than that, for narcissism would presume a self that could be reflected in the mirror of his prose. But there’s no one here. No one who has not turned himself inside out. Who knows he is no more than what is written, impersonal language which streams above the place where he should be. As though Narcissus saw not his reflection but a kind of black hole and tumbled into it.

It is irresponsible. Nothing is being said; no work is being done. This is indulgence, a waste of time, a waste of effort. What does this kind of writing add to the world? What does it make? What does it permit? Worst of all: you have abrogated all responsibility because you will not articulate a position. You write of the Outside, of impersonal affects, of a swarm of forces which escape what is called the Self, but this is a way of avoiding the responsibility of philosophy. You refuse to argue, to present arguments. To use your time in order to focus upon what matters most.

You’ll tell me you never asked for a place at the philosopher’s table, but this is the pathos of pretending to be outside philosophy, one of those rebel thinkers. But you are exactly what Sartre said of Bataille: “an incendiary in carpet slippers.” I know what you’ll say: I cannot find the words, I haven’t the strength to express an opinion, to hypothesise. I’m too weak to to lift myself to the place where a philosophical argument would be possible. But this is a pose; behind your relentless productivity, and your mock-disgust at the same productivity, your great whine about not being educated enough, about lacking taste and culture, I see hubris and retreat.

Everything here is an alibi. You write without responsibility. And I know what you’re going to say. In his letter to Kojève, you”ll tell me, Bataille conceded that everything was finished, history was over, except for the wrap up. One does not have to agree with this to experience what he called unemployed negativity: that residue of restless inaction, of a feverish desire to do something which mocks everything that can be made or achieved. Most often, says Bataille, unemployed negativity becomes art. You’ll remind me that this is an alibi, another lie. And you’ll claim the same could be said of philosophy. But do you think philosophy, with all its riches, its great dignity, its devotion to what matters most would have anything to do with what you call writing?

I can hear you laughing. You laugh and I despise your infinite capacity for evasion, your writerly irresponsibility.  But I will have revenge. You fall towards the Outside, you laugh but it is no one’s laughter. One day it will swallow you up and you’ll struggle to write a few lucid lines.  But you’d like that, wouldn’t you?