Category: Outsiders

How can we speak, when speech is worn down in our mouths? What words are ours, we who lack even an experience of ourselves? Besides, we have nothing to say – what is there to say, for us? – of what can we speak when we live outside time, and even our pasts do not sink into history?

Nothing has happened to us – or if it has happened, it is already forgotten. Or is it that everything has happened, that we’ve exhausted time, and live on in some afterworld? Is this paradise? Is it hell? But we are being neither exalted nor punished, and if the Messiah appeared amongst our number, we would not know him.

For in truth, we do not know that we are here, or that each of us is the one he is, or the one she is. We are all the same; our faces do not matter. Each the same, the one then the other, we form no group, no society. There may be many of us, or few: we do not know. There are no friendships – associations, perhaps, and even a kind of dim recognition (you were beside me earlier; I remember your voice – but not what you said), but nothing else. There are no relationships between us, no kith, no kin: we have worn them out, as we have worn out everything.

Still, we are not alone. We can say, ‘we’: this is a consolation. There is that: our sense of collectivity. The third person plural: we have that; it is ours: but is it ours? It is less firm than the first person, which we never use. Who would dare speak in their own name? To speak of me is only to speak of you; we are all in each other’s places, and who we are, singly, individually, does not matter. I am you – and you: aren’t you also where I am? Who of us has ever minded being no one in particular?

We are not sad. We are placid, simple; ours is a sweet dullness; I think we are smiling, I think we always smile. And sometimes we speak, just to try out speech, just to hear our voices. We could say anything – everything; there’s everything to be said, but without history, without a past – without even a present, let alone a future, there is nothing to relate.

Nothing has happened to us – that, or everything; it does not matter. Nothing – everything: is it that we live where nothing becomes everything, and the other way round. Nothing – everything: that is our threshold, the turning point of the world. We do not rest, but nor are still. We are not even silent, though our murmuring is hardly a sound, and rarely forms itself into a word.

Days pass, we know that. And nights. The passing of the day, the passing of night: soon forgotten. But what is there to remember? Who knows how many days, how many nights there have been? There are no chroniclers amongst us. No prophets. We do not detain time, but let it turn in place.

Time! We only know the incessant, the interminable. What need have we for this instant, or for that? In truth, there is only the return – we live for it – by which what fails to happen happens again. Or is it that we fail it, the event, by being too unprepared, too indifferent? Perhaps it is tired of waiting for us to act, or is our tiredness, our placidity, a sign of its approach?

There are no philosophers amongst us; we do not think, unless thinking is what happens in that same return, which breaks over us each time like the first day. Sweet evasion: is there a kind of thinking that does not ask for a thinker? An evasive thought that is evasion in each of us, our failure to be ourselves? We have always failed; we do not mind. But what would it mean to succeed?

Everything has happened – no doubt. Nothing has happened – without doubt. History has ended, having never begun. And what is time but its disjunctive return, the tearing of each instant from itself, that substitutes for the event the incessance of what does not happen. Do we live? I would say we are alive, but I would also say we are unable to be, just as we are unable not to be. We have no part in duration; time is what we do not endure. Or it is that same non-endurance; it is the unlivable, it is what life becomes when it is absolutely indifferent to itself.

Are we alive? We are not here, I would like to insist on that. Not here – or each of us lives in another’s place. I speak for all of us, and for none of us. No one is speaking in each of us and for all of us. No one speaks; everything that is said is superfluous. Speak to us, and you will here superfluity eroding every word we say.

That is why we smile. We can do nothing; we do not suffer, none of us is sad; we have no words of our own. Were we born too early or too late? I do not know if we are old or young. Did we resign ourselves, long ago, to the incessant, or were we born of that same incessance, as though we were its way of knowing itself? I am not sure, and besides, there is no one here to know.

Unless that ‘no one’ is the locus of another knowledge, and incessance knows itself in our place as each is substituted for another. Still, nothing is kept; knowledge does not settle into itself. Sometimes I think we stand at the beginning of everything, sometimes, at the end. How is it that everything seems possible and impossible, both at once?

We never were: I would like to say that. And we never will be. And in this divided instant, the return of the disjunction of time: we are not here, either. We do not suffer from time; in truth, we do not occupy it, and our vacancy is our liberation. But for what are we free? There is nothing we want; desire is alien to us, or it belongs to no one.

Freedom: sometimes I imagine it as a wind that tousles our hair. But does it know that freedom, for us, is only the wind that bows the heads of corn: it happens, yes, but it does not concern us. Freedom: we can move, there are degrees of movement; each of us, from time to time, stands, or moves about, or lies down: we are not automatons. But it matters not to us, that standing up, that moving about. There is no need for rest where there is no need for movement. Do we live at the end or at the beginning?

But I have said nothing at all. Or by writing, I have tried to tie the incessant to a story. We are outside all stories as we live untouched by time. What has happened? What has ever happened? Our chance is that words sink back into the page, saying nothing. Or that words, lightening themselves, form and disperse like great clouds.

No one suffers here. Time is kind to us. Our lives are sweet and placid. We are calm and languid. There are no words invented that could let us speak. We cannot be apprehended by thought. There is thinking – we know that (but what do we know?). We are with you when the wind from the impossible tousles your hair. With you – but that is not the expression. Unless I could write, with you and without you, or speak of what is outside, always outside, even as it is also our separate bodies.

Persistence without point. Sweet monotony. We interest no one, not even ourselves. We have withdrawn, and first of all from ourselves. Are we asleep? Awake? I do not know if we dream. We are fragments – but of what? From what have we been broken?

What should I be called? By what would I have you call me, you who summon me into your booth? What should you call me, interviewer, who would draw me from my anonymity? A letter: you are to attend an interview on … Addressed to me, to my name, that letter. And so am I here, in the waiting space in an open plan office.

Open plan – everything is open, there are only two rooms that are closed off. Otherwise, booths, booths and booths, to which I will be called in turn. Still the question: what would I like to be called? What name, here, would I like to be mine, I who barely own myself? What name could be mine, what would I like to hear, interviewer, from your mouth?

The office is a reasonable place, that’s clear enough. We are not to be kept waiting too long; we are called clients, we are accorded the respect due to jobseekers as we are called now. Jobseekers, not the unemployed. We are seeking work and not just marooned from it – not left on an obscure island in the middle of the ocean that great ships pass by and ignore. Above all, we are not to be stranded – each one of us has an advisor, each is supposed to attend sessions to assess our jobhunts.

Do we need any help? Can we be offered any assistance? Yes, it is a resonable place, little is required of us, other than we attend, every now and again, in person. We will bring ourselves to the office and present ourselves for questioning – isn’t this to keep our side of the bargain? Isn’t this to keep up with our responsibility? We are called in, and summoned thus from the uncertain space of the outside. Called in, and made to account for ourselves here, in person, in our own voice.

But how to translate what happens out there to the language of the office? How to speak of infinite days and nights – how to speak of the expanse each of us knows and is there behind our eyes? For truly we have been marooned – truly it is as if the great ships have passed and we’ve forgotten everything but our shipwreck. What day is it? What date? Crusoe kept a record of the passing of days, but do we?

We are anachronisms, we know that. We’ve been passed by, we know it. You who would summon us know it well: we are lacking in self-esteem, your clients. We’re lacking in motivation. We need to be formed and molded. They’ve met our type before. We’re all the same! There are so many of us! We are a type, that is clear. There’s nothing special about me and nothing special about you. What petty narcissism to feel different to anyone else!

That’s why we can be summoned in the same voice. That’s why the call can ring out and bring us in. Summoned – the reasonable voice has remit over the infinite. It speaks, and the infinite becomes finite – the undetermined folds itself into a knot of hard determinacy: a name, each of us is to have a name. But what is I would like to be called?

You are reasonable, interviewer. I am your client. A client – this is who I am, it is my unity. And your client – I am at your disposal. You call me, and I come. You tell me you’re at my disposal – that you would like to help me. This is welcome. Who can doubt but that I need help? I’m stranded – the great ships are passing by, and where am I?

Help – I need that. I need to think of my future, to direct my thoughts into a plan for escape. Else a whole life will be spent thus – marooned. I have to take care of myself, to unify what I am, to pull myself together. That’s where you help, isn’t it? By writing to me, by calling out my name in the office, by having me come to you as your client, I receive my name, it comes to me again. A name, a social security number, a case number – so am I identified, and brought back to myself.

Outside, I was never in possession of that, a name. But inside? A name is fitted to me; it is mine. By my name am I picked out from the others. Mine – it is my name; the anonymous has been banished. The anonymous, which corrodes me and rusts me like the old cranes by the docks, is held at bay; it is a new morning; I belong to the present.

Summon me, bring me to myself. I was sleeping for my whole life, I know that. I was asleep – I lived in dreams, in my dreaming – that was not a life. It is to begin here, a life – my life. I will be bound to life – here. We will be joined, one to the other – here.

But how is it that my name in your mouth seems to miss me? How is it, as at the doctors when a name is read and then a buzzer pushed, that the name does not reach me, sounding out in vain? Am I am not to designated? Am I not to be picked out from the rest? Did it bring me to the limit of my strength even to come here, even to sit among others in the waiting room?

What would I have you call me? What name would be mine? What name could reach me and reach you by reaching me? I would like it to be known: I am different to you. I would like that to be known: the fact of my difference and that I remain in my difference. I will turn to you without facing you, do you know that? I have no face, not here, not inside, do you know that?

Every name is mine. Every name that is called here is mine. Who am I? The one called by each of these names, the faceless one who comes to you without coming, who is inside without being inside. Who am I, the one who remains marooned when he is rescued, who stays unemployed even when a job is found for him? Am I not present, too, in your heart, interviewer? Am I not the one who is marooned in you?

Does the failure know he’s a failure? I know it, everyone knows it. I am watchful on the street, lest he see me before I can avoid him – watchful, but also fearful, for I do not want to see him, I want to avoid even that. In truth, I do not even want to see him. The failure: how can I bear to look at him, I who am a success? Why should one successful be even confronted by them, by any of them, the unsuccessful?

By any measure, I’ve succeeded, that’s clear enough. I’ve worked my way clear of non-success; I made my way, though it was difficult, and took much concentration; though it is difficult still, and I am always concentrated on one task or another, even when I descend to the street. Even when I pass among others on the street, and perhaps especially then. For a successful man never relaxes. Concentration is the price of his success; he must keep his eye on the ball, must be watchful and careful, and keep himself in good condition.

Oily fish every day, a visit to the gym every other day, five portions of fruit and vegetables a week: such is what is required to maintain success and the trappings of success. Health! You can’t take it for granted! As a successful man, I must keep up my health; I exercise. And you, who are not successful? You who drink too much and smoke too much and have red eyes and yellow teeth? You whose body is neglected and walk hunched over? Why should I consort with you?

How is it you still presume to recognise me? How is it I still recognise you? What is it in me that knows you, I ask myself that. What is that betrays me? Some measure of non-success, no doubt. Something in me that is not yet successful – or, worse, that I will never be able to transform into success. Then it is a mirror I confront when I see you. There for the grace of God go I, they say, the pious, when they give a quid to the alcoholic. But I say nothing; I cross the street to avoid them; I avoid underpasses where there are beggars. I am of them, which is why I avoid them.

And you, the failure – why is it I would avoid you who are shiftless? Why do I avoid you, workshy one, non-worker, for whom the afternoon is his kingdom? I am at work – and you? I am working as I walk, as I do my errands, and you, wanderer, how can you tell one day apart from another? I was up early this morning, and you? I forewent my lunch hour – and you?

They’re hunting you down, every one of you. They’ll hunt you down, unemployment claimant, disability claimant. One by one , you’ll be caught. Punished – by degrees. £10 if you miss you first interview, £20 if you miss your second: that’s what will be docked from your wage. £10, £20, for not joining our brave new world. But it’s for your own good, failure. For your good, I know it, you know it. For I know you fear me, too – I know it.

Wouldn’t you like to have what I have? Isn’t it what you want, what I have? There is desire in you to work, I know that. You’ll only have to be straightened out, I know it. Straightened – then all your desire will work in the same direction. No dissipation, no vagueness: concentration, concentratedness – life lived in a single direction. And you like me will serve the whole and the good – the greater good. We’ll work alongside one another, at different firms, perhaps, at different agencies, but you will be a worker like me and I will not fear to meet your gaze in the street.

But until then – there’s a long way to go. Until you get there, still a long way. Still must you be straightened out and enskilled, still you will need lessons with flipcharts and teamwork, still there’s a long way to go before you even begin to be employable. And until then? Stay away from me, unemployed one. But you are already with me, I know that, which is why I hate to see you. Below my office, in the broad streets of the everyday, there are dozens of you – anyone on the street could be the non-worker that I dream I am.

Anyone – the unsuccessful are everyone, anyone, and this is the horror. For isn’t my body the body of anyone? One day it will come, the crossover. One day, I will find myself on the other side of the mirror. Who am I, I will ask, who drinks all night? Who am I without a thought in my head? Who am I that my desires run out towards the far horizon? Yes, that is what I dream. Or is it the other way round? Is it that I am one who dreamt he was successful? Is it that I failed and had failed from the first? Then I must ask myself, Who am I, the failure? Who am I, king of the afternoon?

Afternoon, no one’s kingdom. Afternoon, kingdom of no one in particular. The successful have not yet come – and who are we, who have not succeeded? Substanceless, our light borrowed, we are dull moons in the obscurest orbits. Occasionally, one of them will pass us by. Now and then, one of them will come, one of the successful, on one errand or another. They pass us by – how can they do otherwise, we who would only slow them down! They pass us by; our time is rotten – every day, for us, is a wearing away of the same, but theirs? Theirs is linear; it is unidirectional, thrust towards the future’s edge. What it must be to plunge into that future like an eagle plunging to its prey! What keen eyes they must have! What sharp talons!

We see it in the ones who descend to the streets – these are men and women of the future! Theirs are the sleek bodies of the future! How pale and flabby we are! How ill-disciplined! They are all concentration, and we are all – dissipation. How is it that it as though they have stolen our substance? How is it their strength seems drawn from ours, we who are so weak? Some among us talk of revolution, or at least of dragging one of the errand-runners into an alley and showing him or thing or two. But the rest of us, who have heard it before, who have heard everything before, know it’s too late and it was always too late.

It’s part of the order of things, the way things are that there are the successful and there are the unsuccessful. What good is there complaining? What good raising our fists? For they’re hunting us down, one by done. Hunting us down – we are to be trained, enskilled. We are to attend interviews; they’ll summon us up from the street – £10 if we miss the first one, £20 the second, we who only earn £50 a week. They are training us, our pudgy bodies, one by one. One by one – but don’t they understand that we are without number?

I am not one, not a unity, not even that. Not one, and not zero either. Not nothing and yet not a unity – how can I be expected to hold myself together. I can’t count – to one. Who can count, among us, the people of the street? None of us is one, each of us is everyone. I cannot count – who is there to count? But when one of you passes us – when you descend from your offices on one errand or another, it it as though I am awakened from a long sleep.

How quickly you move! How straight your back, as though a cord pulled you upright through your body! How purposeful you are! How concentrated! We wake in the wind of your passing – we come to ourselves then. It is as though each of us were a little eddy of your energy. And do we change you, too? Do we change you, we whose bodies are so heavy and thoughts are so vague?

Sometimes I have dreamt I was one of you. Sometimes, when I am strong, a dream comes that I am one of you, who has come down from the office to the streets. I am the errand runner, that’s who I am, with a lean body and focused mind. The errand runner! To think that I could be trusted to run errands! To think I could blaze with my own light! But already I am moving out of reach of my dream. Soon, again, I will be unable to write, I who only possess borrowed strength. Who am I? soon I will not know that either.

1.

Where do you think it’s going, I’ll tell you where it’s going: nowhere. Where do you think it’s going, do you think it’s going anywhere, well I’ll tell you it’s going nowhere, it’s over now, it’s all over, it was over before it began, it was over from the first. Over, no question about it. Over, having never begun.

Where do you think it’s going, did you think it’s going somewhere, well I can tell you, it’s doomed, it’s going nowhere, you’re already lost. Where was it you supposed you were going, what was it you undertook to do, then, when you were younger, when you were full of confidence, when you wanted to begin? You didn’t understand, then, did you? Didn’t understand the way it was going to turn out and the way it has turned out.

How could it end but in disappointment? Who were you to think it could end in anything but disappointment? By what right did you think you could begin? By what right, and this is the same thing, did you think you could do better than others who failed before you, who had failed before you began. Didn’t you heed the signs? Hadn’t you been shown? Wasn’t it apparent from the first? Wasn’t it clear: failure was your lot, and that from the first and before the first.

Failure, yes, that’s what was decreed and that was how it had to be: how was it you couldn’t understand this law for what it was? How was it you dared to act otherwise? You will tell me it was your youth that led you astray, that it was by your youth that you forgot what you’d been shown and that you’d ever been shown.

Wasn’t I the one who carefully showed you, who took you here and took you there and showed you? Wasn’t I the one who took you round and showed you, and did not only show you, but explained to you, and not only explained to you, but wrote it down for you and sent it to you, wasn’t I the one who bothered, who saw your youthfulness, your impetuousness, and recognised the one he once was in his youth, in his impetuousness?

What could you have known then of disappointment? What could you have known of failure? In truth, you had never really failed. In truth, you had never quite failed, because there was still hope in you, still hope that tomorrow you might succeed where today you had failed, and that tomorrow you might succeed where others had failed. I saw it in you – how could I not see it? – for I saw myself, and only myself. Yes, I saw the one I was, I lost my hope anew, I lost my faith anew, it was painful for me, do you think I enjoyed showing you the evidence and explaining how it was and writing to you, writing it down so you could keep it before you, writing what I had learnt and took half my life to learn?

I was doing you a favour, no question of that. I wanted to help you out, as I had not been helped. Had I been helped? Now, thinking of it, I wonder if I wasn’t helped, if another hadn’t sought to help me as I sought to help you, if another hadn’t recognised himself in me just as I recognised myself in you. Perhaps this is the way it is with us, perhaps this is how what is called wisdom is transmitted from one generation to another. Yes, from one to another as from father to son, it is passed down. Passed down, yes, but forgotten almost at once – forgotten at once, yes, and isn’t this the tragedy?

Perhaps I was told, as I told you. Perhaps I was shown as I showed you. Perhaps it was explained to me and written down for me just as I explained it to you and wrote it down for you. Where did I lose it, that bit of paper? Where did I lose it, if I ever had it, and now it seems I remember a scrap of paper, lost, no doubt, gone, no doubt, like so many other things – where was it lost? I would not have known its value – how could I have done? How will you know its value, what I will pass to you?

You will not know just as I did not know; this is how it is; this is how it must be. One generation tries to pass on its lesson to another, but that lesson is forgotten. The fruit of one generation’s wisdom is to be passed on, but there’s no chance, it’s lost almost straightaway, and the coming generation will have to learn for itself, the new generation will have to make the same discoveries for itself. How painful it is to grow old and know it will be forgotten, everything I’ve learnt! How painful to grow older and know nothing will be transmitted, and all forgotten!

Was I told? Was I shown? Was it explained to me? I’ve forgotten. Where was the evidence? The scrap of paper? Lost, just as you will lose the scrap I would pass to you. So where do you think it’s going? Where do you think it’s heading? Where’s it off to, towards what is it bound? Where it’s going, where are you driving it, where is it being driven? I’ll tell you where it’s going, though you won’t want to know. I’ll tell you, though you won’t listen, just as I, no doubt, wasn’t prepared to listen.

I’ll tell you, I’ll show you, I’ll write it down for you, I’ll take this stub of pencil from my coat pocket and write it on the scrap of paper I keep in my other pocket. I’ll tell you, I’ll write it down, I’ll pass it to you, the message, as though you were my own son and I was your father, even though there’s no point, even though it’s a wasted effort, and I know it just as the one who wrote it for me knew it and the one who wrote it down for him knew it and so on ad infinitum and unto the ages of ages and so will it be ad infinitum and down unto the ages of ages.

Where’s it going then? Where do you think it’s going, I’ll tell you, it’s simple enough, it’s going nowhere, there, that was simple: nowhere, it’s going nowhere, you haven’t a chance, you won’t even begin, you won’t even start, because it was over before it began, because it was botched then and it is botched now just as it will be botched for the youth whom you, one day, will try to instruct, just as another, with all the keenness of youth will refuse to be told.

Botched from the first, botched from day one, not beginning, not even bringing itself to the beginning, not even at the starting line or in the race. Outside, from the first. Counted out from the first. Did you think you could begin? Was that really what you thought? Did you think the world would make an exception for you? Did you think you were the exception? Did you think it was your mission? I would have told you. I could have told you then, even before you made your plans, could have said: you haven’t a chance.

Yes, I would have done, and perhaps I did, even I can’t remember. Yes, perhaps I told you before – or was it I who was told – I forget. Someone was told, that’s the thing, whether you or I it makes no difference. There was something told, the old wisdom, there was the old wisdom to be transmitted, there was the wisdom to be passed from one to another, even though nothing ever passes from old to young.

Do you think we speak of our failures for our own benefit? Do you think we speak for our own sake? You never listen, you never deign to listen because you think that’s what the old do, talk, and for their own benefit. But in truth we never talk for our own benefit, in truth it is never ourselves of whom we are thinking. We are old; we have stood aside; we have made room; there are many of us, but still, we’ll make room, still there’ll be place for you, still the opening in the crowd, still we’ll stand back, some will stand in a ring around you, yes, you were protected, even loved, do you understand that?

And it was out of love that we told you, that you heard the same on all sides, and from each of us old men. There are many of us, it is true, and you heard it over and again. On all sides, bearing down on you, a ceaseless muttering. Yes, surrounding you, the same crowd, each interchangable, one as good as any other, one as wise as any other – we told you, we spoke to you, though to you no doubt it was babbling and madness, we told you, we spoke, and when we thought we couldn’t be understood we wrote it down, we set it down on paper, on scraps of paper, writing with pencil stubs we’d saved in our coats.

You don’t have a chance, we said, forget it, we said, it was over from the first and it’s over now, don’t begin, don’t start, spare yourself the effort, spare yourself suffering, stop at once, give up and lie down in the circle we’ve cleared for you, give up now, lie down. That’s what we said, and it’s what you wouldn’t hear. We said it, but you would not listen.

2.

Is it true, as some of us wondered, that we wanted it thus? Is it true that you were our hope, our bravest, our first-born? Is it true that we placed our hopes in you, and what we told you was by way of a test, a wall through which you had to break? Is it true that each of us receives our youth again by way of your strength, by way of your hope and your courage, you who would break out of the circle of the old and out of all circles?

Begin, we hope. Begin! Begin, and live for us, begin and overcome us, trample over our bodies – is that what we hope? Perhaps there is truth in that, and we too are young. Perhaps, beyond our circle, there are others older than us and more weary than us. Perhaps, beyond our circle, beyond us, there are others still, old and wizened, who have given up on hope and on hoping for hope. That’s why they do not speak, those others. That’s why you’ll hear not a word, for what have they to convey? What lesson have they to transmit?

They know nothing will get through, they know, even as their glance falls on us by chance, even as, when they open a rheumy eye and it glances upon us, that we have no hope just as you have no hope. They know, but they are utterly without hope, those of the outer circle, those to whom we never turn. In truth, we fear the outer circle. In truth, we fear it, the circle to which we’ll be driven, we who think ourselves as of the inner circle.

When will hope collapse? When will become too weary for hope? When will the measure fail us? Because it will fail us. We’ll fade; we’ll lose hope and we’ll be forced outside, to lie down, body among other bodies, to lie with the others, outside. We’ll wear away, we’ll find our way on the outside even as you who were young will fill the inner circle. And so it will go on, generation unto generation, one after the another, down unto the ages of ages.

Do they hate us? Have they even noticed us? After all, the battle has been won, we’ve been driven out or driven under. The battle won, and they are everywhere and we are nowhere, so why should they hate us? Most are unaware there was even a battle. The takeover happened without appearing as such; the battle was over before they knew it began.

What battle was there, what takeover? There is no one for them to hate, after all, we’ve been driven out or driven under, driven outside or crushed by great wheels. We’re already out, or if we are inside, we are too busy, too wretched, in too marginal a position, they’ve forgotten us, and we’re being crushed by great wheels. What hope is there for us? But there is infinite hope for them; they have won; but the victors have been so victorious they don’t even know there’s been a battle.

What battle?, they say, and blink. Was there a battle? It felt like one, but in truth we were so unmatched to our enemy we hadn’t a chance. Did the enemy notice us as they rolled over us? Or was it that they could only roll thus, that the great wheels must turn thus, and we were only that which was in their way? In truth, they paid no attention to us, we were not worthy of attention. In truth, we were brushed aside as an annoying fly was brushed aside, temporary irritant.

What did they have on their mind? Getting on with business. They were strong and we were weak; what could we say to ourselves but, they hate us. They hadn’t noticed us, we were nothing to them, they were already fearsomely strong, but we said to ourselves, they hate us. The great wheels rolled over us; what else could we say but, they hate us, they sought us out and hunted us down, the great extirpation was systematic, they deliberately drove us to the margins or drove us out, it was their plan from the start. But they didn’t notice us, we were nothing to them, there was no battle, but how could there be when we had no power, no voice.

The great wheels rolled across us as wheels roll. They wheels turned, we were crushed, but they didn’t notice. How could they notice when we were so small and insignificant? They hate us, we said to ourselves. They hate us, which is why they’ve sought us out, but in fact they never sought us out, the wheels turned because wheels turned; they were strong and we were weak, and their strength, which increased daily, meant we could not endure.

Do they hate us? I’ve looked into their inscrutable faces and can see no hate. I’ve looked into their eyes and I see no malice. How soft and pudgy they are! How unstrong they appear! But their softness is a sign of their strength. They can allow themselves to grow soft because of their strength. I do not understand them, but I know there is no hatred, only strength, only certainty. They know the future is theirs. But they with a knowledge that is benign, their sense of their rightness is absolute; they are in possession of the right methods, the right techniques, it is obvious to them. They are on the right path, but for them it is not even a path, it is the broad day, it is the morning of the world, it is the still-new morning. They have the right techniques, but to them they are not even techniques, but the expression of what they are, the gestures closest to them.

How I admire their strength, and how I fear them! How I admire and fear them! I am drawn to them, it is true, I love nothing more than certainty that is unaware of itself, I love those with a sense of the inside and the outside, I love those who can divide night and day. But I fear them, that is also true, and I want to say they hate us, even if that hatred is as vast as their strength, and even if they do not know they hate. I have know them well, have studied under them and worked beside them; I know them and am drawn to them.

What certainty! What direction! What strength! One wheel of the great juggernaut, a forewheel of the great vehicle, part of a vaster ensemble that drives itself across us. A wheel, one wheel of the juggernaut, a plate of the caterpillar tread as it flattens us: they belong to the new industries and the new techniques, they speak of the new world and of the flattening of the old world. What chance could we have?

They hate us, we say to ourselves, but like the juggernaut, the great bulldozer, theirs is the movement forward, theirs is the drive forward, theirs is the expansion to the far limits of the horizon. Who are we to them, unbraced against the future? Who were we, unprepared and dreaming? The battle was over before it began; in their histories they will not remember us. Their histories, the epic poem of their victory will have no room for us. We are forgotten, but in truth, we had never been remembered; no one set their sights on us; no one sought us as a target, we were only part of the foilage, part of the world to be conquered.

In the end, for them, there will never have been a battle, the world was theirs before they noticed it; there was no battle and no frontier, there was only the inside, which was to stretch across the horizon. In the end … but there will be no end, they belong to the morning, they are machines of the dawn, and have only begun, one wheel of the juggernaut, to flatten the world. Where runs the line between inside and outside? For them there is no line, no frontier; there was no enemy. Victory is theirs and it was not even victory. The battle was won, but there was no battle. They hate us, we say, but we were always unnoticed, they looked beyond us, their gaze was fixed on the future.

2.

Ours is a pluralistic tradition, they say, all are admitted, they say. We are tolerant, they say, and all can be admitted. Just speak as we speak, and speak to us. Learn to speak like us, and to speak with us, and you will be admitted. Speak as we speak, learn our tongue, and you will prosper in our kingdom, we’ll make a place for you. Translate yourselves into our tongues, make it so we can understand you, and we’ll give you some room, you’ll decorate our world. Who was not more open to debate than we are? Who was not more welcoming of discussion? We have time, all of time, to walk with one another and to talk. We have all of time, it is still morning, to walk with you and speak. Only learn our language, learn how to speak, and you will be admitted.

For a time, some of us tried to speak, some of us went over to them and tried to speak. They spoke; some went inside, some disappeared there. But the rest of us never learnt to speak; we were too weak. They hate us, we thought, and what chance do we have. They hate us, we thought, and it is not worth our time to learn their language. For how could we make ourselves understood? How when the conditions of the debate were theirs from the start? How when the rules were in their hands, even though they didn’t know the rules were in their hands?

Happy victors who held everything, who possessed everything in their great hands! Happy victors for whom the day was still young and the horizon wide! They hate us, we said, but in truth they were like clumsy beasts who wanted to play with us. They hate us, but they came towards us like great and clumsy beasts who would tear us from themselves as they played with us. They were curious, that was true. They bounded towards us, we were new sport, new curiosity. They were not cruel; there was no hatred in them. They came towards us, curious at their new playmates. But how could we play with them, we for whom it was not a game? How could we but watch as those who played thus were torn apart and scattered to the wind?

There was no hatred in them, that was true, but there was a fearsome strength that was the strength of the whole world. They hated nothing; they were pleasant, amenable, but in truth they were at one with the strength of a new world and with the morning of the world. Conquerers, they didn’t know themselves as conquerers! Conquerers, they didn’t see us as the conquered, as panting and exhausted from the first! They hate us, we said, but we spoke of the hatred their world had for us. They hate us, we said, but it was their language which hated us. How could learn to speak? How could we translate ourselves into the new idiom?

Back and forth they went all day; back and forth, with seminars and colloquia. How busy they were! How feeble we were! Back and forth, busily, they spoke here and spoke there, and invited others to speak here and speak there. How marvellous, that activity! For a time, we tried to imitate them. For a time, we lived by imitation, we tried to do as they did. But the strength failed us; the measure of strength was denied us – were the losers; we had lost and sank down in despair.

3.

The inside was inside and we were outside. It seemed we were inside, but in fact we were outside. In the offices and lecture rooms, we were already outside, we knew we were outside, we were held into the outside everyday. We who had worked ourselves inside, we in fact outside from the first. We who were inside were in fact outside, we belonged outside, we had no place inside.

The inside was inside, the great wheels turned, the juggernaut rolled forward and we saw it brought a whole world. The inside was inside, it sang of itself and perpetuated itself. The inside sang in the podgy faces of our colleagues. How could know their stare but as an accusation? How could we know them but as usurpers? In truth, they had always been there. In fact, they had always been there, the inside had always been the inside.

True, for a time, rules were relaxed and a kind of opening had occurred. For a time, it is true, they allowed others to come, others were allowed to join the party. But those times were passed, those times had already passed. Who were we to think we had a place in the new world? We were men and women of the past; we were men and women of the exception. We did not belong and could not belong, for how could we belong?

They belonged inside and we were outside. They belonged inside and were continuous with the whole history of the inside. Theirs was the inside and they embodied the whole history of the inside, its great tradition. Who were we, who were outside? Who were we, who were the outside inside? Sometimes they would sniff us curiously. What is that smell? they would ask themselves. Sometimes, they would step back, confused: who are they? what is that smell? They would narrow their eyes for a moment, but only for a moment.

The enemy, they thought, who was not even an enemy, was vanquished. The battle, which was not for them a battle, was over long before. They, the new breed, had conquered the world. It was immediate and obvious, it was the air they breathed and the wide morning. What were we to them? What could we be? They passed over us; they ignored us. They were busy with the seminars and colloquia, and who were we to them?

They hate us, we said, but this was a lie even to us. They hate us, but who were we to them? They were on the side of the inside. They were on the inside of the inside, theirs was the kingdom. Inside, they feared nothing, for they brought the inside everywhere, and what had they to fear?

4.

Slowly our last strongholds fell. Slowly, the last kingdoms fell. Some were conquered by a show of arms – just a show, that was enough. Some converted, some went over to the inside, even though they would always remain outside inside. Some, exhausted, dispersed to the four winds. Slowly we lost the battle, but was there even a battle? And what did we embody, we who were outside? What was it we were to defend, what tradition was ours?

Only pathos was left to us. Only a feeling of defeat and strangulation. Only pathos was ours. Only the pain-filled knowledge that the inside had confirmed itself as it had always confirmed itself. Only the pain-drenched knowledge that the inside was at one with the tradition of our country and that nothing had changed in that tradition. Who were we to think we could change anything? Who were we, outsiders, who thought we could change anything. The inside confirmed itself; the law confirmed itself. The inside was the inside, and we were the outside. The inside rolled its great wheels across us and broke us.

Some of us were grateful to be so broken. How they had hated themselves! Now was the judgement enacted. Now was it passed, the great sentence, in the juggernaut which broke their backs. And the rest of us? We were too weak for hatred. Too weak but to say, they hate us. Too weak but for that to be our mantra, they hate us, as if they had noticed us. For what had they noticed? Who were we, such that we could be noticed? Laughter. Laughter of the whole day. Who were we, after all, to be noticed? And with our last breath, we breathed – for how hard it was not to be noticed, never to have been acknowledged as an obstacle or an enemy – they hate us.

1.

Don’t give us a thing, we won’t be grateful. Don’t give us anything, we’ll spit it back in your face. There’s no point in bringing us into the fold, we don’t belong there. You mean well, you’d like to bring us in, you’d like to make it less exclusive, but really there’s no point, as we don’t belong inside. You are generosity itself, you want to help, to open things up, to allow a new group of people to get in, but it’s a bad idea, we don’t belong there, we’d only spoil things for you, we’d only throw what you give us back in your face, we’d only resent you for what you tried to do.

You say you want nothing from us, but in fact you want a great deal. You say we can come in just as we are, but you know, don’t you, that we don’t belong inside, but should stay outside, with our own kind. You want nothing from us, we can come as we are, but we belong outside, not inside, and to join you would mean we’d have to give up too much, because we’d have to give up everything we are.

You say nothing need change, that we are welcome as we are, that we bring our own insights, our own perspective, that this is valuable, this is already a contribution, but don’t you understand that this same insight, this same perspective is what confirms for us that we do not belong inside? You tell us it is about inclusivity, about new voices and fresh perspectives, but don’t you see that as soon as we cross the threshold our perspective is no longer fresh and that our voices are no longer new?

You want to include us, it is true, and we appreciate the gesture, but if we accepted we’d come to resent you, it would lead inevitably to resentment. At first, it is true, we appreciated your generosity, we liked the gesture, but really you shouldn’t give us a thing, we won’t be grateful, we’ll spit it back in your face. Because on the one hand, there is your generosity, your desire to do good, to include us at last, to take account of us at last, and on the other, there is the impossibility of taking account of us, the impossibility of admission. On the one hand, your generosity and on the other hand, our ungenerosity, on the one hand your grace and on the other, our resentment, our hatred.

True, some of us may look like we’ve fitted in, some of us, like well-trained apes, may look as though we belong, but this is only because we wanted to escape unemployment and temporary work, only because we wanted a resting place to draw breath and look around and see where we were. But how can this last when we know we do not belong, that the inside is the inside and the outside is the outside, and no one should have brought us in, no one should have granted us admission? How when the inside is there precisely to keep us out, when the inside defines itself by our exclusion, when the very sense of the inside depends on our being outside?

2.

The inside is inside and the outside is outside, this was how it always was, until that period, which thankfully is nearly over, when a few of us from the outside were brought inside. Yes, there was the inside and the outside, it was as it always was but for those few of us who were admitted, who were allowed to come in, though it was clear we did not belong, who were invited in and for whom place was made. Yes, there was a change in the academy, for a time the rules changed, we were sought after, and we were supposed to bring a fresh perspective to the academy, to open things up and we were welcome for that reason.

Why didn’t they understand it would poison them, those who were inside, and poison us, who were made to come from the outside to the inside? Why didn’t they understand that they offered us would taunt us, that what they gave we would throw back immediately, that we would only resent them for their kindnesses, for the grants they gave us? Why didn’t they understand we accepted the invitation only to pause, only to rest and catch our breath, and that as soon as we did, resentment would fill us and we would resent what we had been given and those who gave it to us?

Worst was that while we’d lived in ignorance of our exclusion, now we were aware of it, now that awareness was all there was. Worst that we knew our exclusion even as we were included, we knew our exclusion by way of that inclusion. Now the way in was the way out; the place of repose was exposed on four sides to the outside, there was only the outside into which we were held even though we were inside. For a time we were resentful, we hated everything, but over time, resentment fell away from us. Even resentment was impossible. We carried the outside with us, even here. Even inside, there was the outside, and here more than ever.

For a time, we consoled ourselves by imitating others, we would write articles and books, we could teach like the others and administer like the others. For a time, we were content to imitate others, content to do as others did, even though we knew for all that we were still apes, even though our labours were bent on imitation. But we knew one day that the ruse would be up, our imitation would be revealed for what it is, for what were our books and articles compared to the ones of those who belonged inside? Yes, for a time, it may have appeared we had promise, that we were producing interesting work, but one day we knew the game would be up, it would come to an end, we would be revealed for what we are, it would be revealed to us, as if for the first time, that we did not belong, that the inside was inside and we belonged outside.

How could it be otherwise? If it was by a kind of mistake we found admittance, that mistake would reveal itself to us, and to us first of all, we would know our station was ours only by mistake, and that the position in which we found ourselves was above all not ours, that it could not be ours.

How could it be otherwise? They knew as we did not know how to write and how to speak, they knew how to dress and how to hold doors open for others, they knew how to eat in public and how to drink in public, they knew what to say and what not to say, they knew how to walk without loping, they knew how to show polite interest and involve others, they knew how to speak in complete sentences, they knew all of this without knowing it, it was clear to them without their ever being aware of its clarity, except when, perhaps, we so obviously failed to dress properly and to hold doors open for others, except when our guard was down and we failed to show polite interest and to involve others, except then when we fell short of what had been asked of us, when we came up against the limits of our capacity to imitate, except when our apishness was revealed for what it was – then, perhaps, they knew what we were not and what they possessed, then, with disappointment, they had to admit the experiment was a failure and we had disappointed them, that it had been impossible from the first and we had no chance of fitting in.

They knew then, our benefactors, what they possessed and we did not possess, they knew what was theirs by birth and what was not theirs by birth, knew what they had, our benefactors, without knowing that they had it. Yes, they saw how every line we wrote and every line we read confirmed our non-belonging, that everything we read and everything we wrote confirmed what we were not and could not be.

Our feeble talk of ethics-and-politics was only our way of carving our name on the great edifices of culture; our half-Marxism was only our way of scrawling a resentful little signature across those great, beautiful edifices, whose beauty, in truth, we admired and aspired to, but that we could only spoil with our apish hands as soon as we tried to add our names to the great lists of professors and readers and senior lecturers, to those oeuvre-builders, to those of long careers and lengthy schooling who had all of Western culture at their beck and call.

How could we add our nasty little scrawl to that long list of professors and readers and senior lecturers? How could we add our resentful mark to those who by their modesty and meticulousness, had built great oeuvres? How could we think our portraits would join the portraits of others who worked patiently and meticulously, who worked step by patient step, pausing to make sure the first step was taken, that a step was secure, before a second step was taken?

In truth we who were once too wild, would be shown by our portrait to be only dull-eyed apes, diminished beasts. How difficult it was for us to cross from instant to instant! How difficult to muster our thoughts! We were scattered across the day, our attention was caught and held by a million things, our apish attention was hypnotised by our many tasks and we conserved nothing of our strength. How disappointing we were to our benefactors! How ashamed they were of the way we turned out! They gave up and turned from us; our office doors went unopened and we laboured in obscurity. Years passed in dust and darkness.

3.

The cleverest among us, the most cunning, argued our benighted position was everything, that our entrapment was also the condition of our release, the promise of our freedom. The cleverest supposed this promise lay in our forced apishness, in the imitation by which we lived; that ours was a position of critique, that we exposed the great lie for what it was, that ours was the living refutation of the great lie of the academe. Apes emailed apes, apes phoned other apes and for a while, a new excitement was felt: perhaps ours was the position from which something could be born, perhaps we, who had fallen so far below need, who remained outside, could draw on a freedom that was uniquely ours. The academe would have failed in us, it would have come to an end with us, that was our ethics-and-politics, that was our chatter of ethics-and-politics and the coming revolution.

But what we possessed we did so because of our weakness and because of our failure. What we had we had by way of weariness and boredom, and we lost it by way of weariness and boredom. Failure did not become victory, weakness did not become strength and we apes stopped emailing one another and greeting one another, and withdrew into mute apishness and mute despair. We hadn’t the strength, we hadn’t the initative. Who would rise from our ranks and lead us when our positions were so precarious and our contracts so short? Sometimes resentment would cross our faces, sometimes wildness would fill our eyes, but we were tame apes, and we dreamt not of the savannah, but of the books we would write in imitation of others.

We even disgust ourselves. How is this degradation possible? In Well’s fantasy it took thousands of years for the Morlocks to separate themselves from the Eloi, but it has happened to us in the space of a few generations. We never had a chance, we know that now. Why did we even think we had a chance? Why did we think things were opening up? Nothing was opening up. The same walls, the same doors as were there for Jude the Obscure. The same walls, the same doors made solely to keep us out.

What place did we have inside? What place could we take there, when the inside was constructed precisely to keep us outside? In truth, we know our place is outside. In truth, we know that it is best for us that we remain outside. Yours is the kingdom, ours the wandering about. Yours are the feet square on solid earth, ours the sore feet from wandering here and there. Don’t listen to our moaning, insiders, don’t mind our wailing, we know where we belong. We lament not our position in the world – it is just, it is right – but the cruelty of fate. How could it be that we were destined to remain outside even as you were inside?

That’s what we lament, the whole situation. We lament the whole, we do not wail for ourselves. How did we think we could get in? But there was hope! Hope, once upon a time. Hope that we could take our place among the other insiders. Hope that by some oversight, by some loophole we would be permitted to gain entry. That is youth: hope, the gift of hope. How difficult it is to grow old! How difficult it is to acknowledge, at last, that the last of youth’s potential has drained from us! Only then do we look around ourselves and acknowledge where we are.

So we are outside, we tell ourselves. So this is where we are. Before then, it passed by us in a blur. We were too busy moving from place to place, trying to get inside. Before, we were too busy, we had no time to see where we were. And no desire, either. Who wants to see where they are? Who wants to accept their station in life? That only comes with age, and with the enfeeblement that accompanies age. One day, age says to you, enough, stop this wandering about, stopping bashing your head against the walls and the doors, there’s no point. Age says, sink down against the wall, acknowledge you are beaten, accept your place. You failed, but you were destined to fail; the grounds of your hope were bogus.

Once, it is true, you had the gift of hope, you searched for signs in the world outside – you thought: if I am alert enough, quick enough, I might get in. Once you possessed that great hope in your guile and cunning to think you might separate yourself from the others and get in, but in truth, there was never a hope, never a chance, never a clue. What signs you saw were bogus signs. You came back to the other outsiders, ashamed. And they came to you, ashamed. For they had had the same dream as you. You had all shared the same dream, the same delusion.

Now there is at least comfort in your shared predicament. Now there are others to slump down besides, to whom you can say, we gave it our best shot. There would be a kind of glory to this slumping down if you had the energy. But listless, drained of hope, you sink to the ground, you lie there wandering if that ground is also a wall. The sky spread above you. How distant it is! As far as the far interior, where the insiders are! As far as the dreams of your youth!

They have the right skillset and you have the wrong skillset. They have the right connections and you have the wrong connections. They are taller than you, they walk upright, not hunched over, their eyes are clear and their skin shining. Look at you! How did you ever think you had a hope? Why did you think you could sneak in when it was stamped on your face from the start? The face of a failure. The face of one who had failed in advance. The stooped gait of one who had dreamt of escape. The dull eyes of one who studied in the evenings. The grey skin of one who had not seen the sun.

Now are growing old. We are slumped together,  growing older, seeing in the others only our own grey and ravaged faces. Why did we think we could get inside? It would be comic if we had the energy to laugh. But we have no energy. Our gaze surveys the world indifferently. The greyness of the outside, as grey as our own skin, as grey as our studies and the grey sky. What hope was there? Our joy, once, was in moving too quickly to see the greyness. Our hope lay in the dream of outdistancing the world, of going inside. We had no eyes for the world, then. No time to see what would later fill our days and nights.

Do we even dream of the inside anymore? Is it there, that hope, even in our dreams? Morlocks and Eloi – which are which? We’ve forgotten. The one high, the other low, the one tweedy, the other non-tweedy. The one with elbow patches, the other without elbow patches. The one with a big car his mother bought him, the other without a car, either big or small. The one with references from the good and the great, the other with references from the bad and the mediocre.

And if you managed to get a reference from one of the good and the great, as I did in my distant youth? If it happened by some miracle that one of the good and the great wrote you a reference? It was written in a single line, a single sentence. It was written as a single sentence, with a clear message. In one single line, it said, in effect: keep him outside. Let him remain outside. Let him pass his days outside. Do not let him in. How could it be otherwise?

In truth, the same was written in every line of our CVs! How we laboured over them, our CVs and letters of application! How carefully we pored over every line, rocking our heads like talmudic scholars! We went through every line of job adverts to make sure they were echoed in our letters of application! Over and over again, night after night, we reread our applications and our CVs. We printed them out on vellum, we printed them on special gold stationary in imperial blue ink, but it made no difference. We folded them into golden envelopes and sent them by registered post, but it made no difference.

They could tell, straightaway, the search committees, the recruiters, that we were not one of them. It was obvious from the start. What hope did we have? What chance did we have? On the face of it, we had every chance. On the face of it, it is a meritocratic world. But what chance did we have to earn merits? It as clear right away there was nothing to distinguish us from the other huddled masses. It was clear on what side we belonged. The outside, not the inside. The outside, the grey world, and not the inside, the world of colours and flavours and joy.

What chance did we have? What hope did we have? We clutch them still, our CVs, our letters of application. Still our computers are full of drafts of letters of application. We would laugh if we had the strength. Yes, if we were strong enough, we’d laugh at our predicament. But who has the strength? All that running about drained us. We were here and then there, taking part-time work here and then there, rushing about. They threw a little work to us, here and then there, on condition that we move here and then there, on condition we were ready for work at any time, at all times, that every day was a work day.

Yes, there was something for us to do then, in the old days. We thought we had been chosen, thought we had been selected from the masses, called forward for special favours and special attentions. But in truth, we were all the same to them. The same mass, the same magma, each interchangeable, all exactly alike. How could they tell us apart? We were, as a whole, marked apart from them. From the first, we were different. From the first we looked different and no doubt smelt different. We lacked the manners, lacked the right way of talking, lacked the vocabulary. No doubt we lacked the right gestures and grace.

Occasionally they threw us some work. That was generous. Occasionally, some work here and there – what generosity! We thought we had been favoured, by in fact it was only chance that favoured us, as, on another day it would withdraw its favour. For in truth we could not be told apart. We were all exactly alike, and it didn’t matter to them which one of us was called forward for a little part-time work. There were no special favours, no special attention. None of us was special, none of us favoured. Favour fell on all and none.

What chance did we have? If I could laugh, I would laugh at our youthful folly. If I had the strength to laugh, I would do so at our early optimism. Did we really think we could pass among them, as one of them? Did we really think we pass as insiders, when from the first it was clear that we belonged outside? For that is where we belong, outside. For a time, it is true, a few outsiders got inside. For a time, it was possible. Those were the golden years of which our elders spoke. A marvellous time, when there was a real meritocracy, and some among us found admittance. But then the door closed shut again. It shut tighter than ever.

And what of those who had found their way inside? They send signals to us, we are sure of it. They send signs in what they publish, in the publications which reach us outside. Signs only we can read. But even those publications are becoming rarer and the signs no longer reach us. Did they ever reach us? Did we dream those signs, those signals? Was it another of our youthful delusions? Who of us can tell? Who can remember? We’ve no strength left for memory.

Every day is the same, every night is the same. Sometimes, a cry goes up. Sometimes, a wailing. But we do not wail for ourselves, for our particular case, but for the whole situation, for what the ancients called fate. It is an impersonal howl, more of a whimper than a howl, more a mewling that a whimper, and it soon dies down. Every day is the same, every night. Dawn comes with the promise of a beginning, but we are not fooled. There is the sun above the horizon, but we are not fooled. What is light but a lie? We have been made too many promises to believe. Too many promises, too many hints that there might be work here and there, that our contract might be extended, when in truth the work had already dried up, and the contract would go to insiders.

Night comes with the promise of an end, but we are not fooled by that, either. What is darkness but the time before another day? What is the day but the time before darkness? Night brings nothing to term, nothing is completed, nothing finished. What does not begin does not end, either. What failed to begin fails to end. What returns is only the failure of the beginning, the lack of firm ground. You take it for granted, insiders, the ground beneath your feet. But there is no ground for us to stand on, nowhere to take a stand. How can we find our footing? How could we dream of beginning? The beginning is over, having never begun. The end cannot come, because nothing has happened.

Our early scurrying was the imitation of beginning. Only now do we understand it. Our activity, our job applications, the part-time hours we willingly took on: all this was a imitation of action. Sometimes a great ululation arises from the plains. We lament not for ourselves, but for everything, for the division between the inside and the outside, and for the walls and doors which keep us out and keep them inside.

What would we do if one of them came outside? What would we do if through some great error, some lapse, one of the insiders found themselves outside? Tear him apart? We haven’t the energy. Ask him for favours? But what is the point? Feel his tweed jacket? Perhaps. Touch his elbow pads? Maybe. Ask him for stories about the inside? But we have heard everything, all the rumours. Of great tables and great feasts, of bottles of port refilled every night, of cloisters and lawns and the sound of choirs and organs. We have heard it all and we’ve heard enough. Do not disturb us, we would say. Find your own corner in which to lament. Or lie down and be still among us. Lie down, take off your tweeds and join us.

But in truth, such a mistake is no longer possible. The walls are being built yet higher and the doors are being made yet stronger. New fortifications are being made. New procedures are in place. One day our descendants will speak of ours as the time of hope, of the time when the young still had the luxury of hope. They will regard us as indulgent, we who had some little hope from the start. How indulgent they were, our forefathers, they’ll say. How sentimental, with their wailing. Our descendants will be harder than us, more immured than us. They will be blind and stooped from birth, from the outset. Nothing will ever begin for them, even the dream of beginning. What youth will they have? They’ll be born straight into old age. Elderly from the start. Half-dead from the first.

In their blindness they will know neither night or day. In their deafness, only an impersonal roaring without cease. They will read nothing and know nothing, all will have been forgotten before they begin. Compared to them, we are strength itself! How lucky we were to have known hope! How lucky even to see a job application! How lucky to be able to draft a CV! How lucky to receive a rejection letter! How lucky to hear our name spoken by one who called us for some part-time work! Yes, this is a silver age, not the golden age, it is true, but not yet the desolate age without hope.