Category: Today

Soon I will go to work; soon I will wheel the bike onto the street. Meanwhile, a few minutes to write. Always something else is about to begin, always errands elsewhere and tasks elsewhere. Soon, to work, soon the bike must be lifted over the threshold into the street, and meanwhile, a few minutes, not long, no more than half an hour. Soon, the trip to work, not far, and even less far if I cycle rather than walk, and in the meantime, a few minutes to write, but what shall I write? Soon, the cycle on the street, the front door locked, and I will roll down the hill to work. A few minutes left, however, a few minutes to write something, but what shall I write?

– The flat smells of rubber, write that. – The flat smells of rubber from the wheels of the bike. – The cereal bowl is in the sink, write that. – The cereal bowl is in the sink, soaking with the coffee cup. – Nothing in particular is happening, write that. – Nothing in particular is happening. The washing up soaks in the washing up bowl in the sink, the bike is the hallway and light comes through the bevelled window which divides my bedroom from my living room. – There, that’s better, you’re writing something. – But what I am writing? – You’re setting down details, you’re writing about the world, this is already enough. 

– Soon, the trip to work. Soon, the trip to the office by bike. Downhill all the way to the office. Meanwhile, a few minutes to write, but what to write? – Write of what you see around you. Write of the room and the flat and the view through the window. – I’ve written of that. – Write of what you hear in the room and the flat. – I can’t hear anything. Nothing at all. – Write about your keyboard and your monitor and the desk. – I’ve done that all that. I’ve written enough.

– Then what is there left to write about? What do you want to write about that is not this and not that? – Everything. – What prevents you from writing about everything? Don’t you understand that writing must pass by way of everything in order to say everything? That it must pass through the room, the flat, the rubber wheels of the bicycle and the bicycle, the office and the hill on the way to the office? Though all things, omitting nothing. Through the things of the present and the things of the past. Through the things of the present and the past and even the future. And above all, nothing must be illustrative. Everything is everything. Again, above all: nothing must be illustrative. – The bike in the hall. The cereal bowl in the sink, in water. The coffee cup by the cereal bowl in the sink, in water. The long hill to work.

– Nothing must be illustrative. All motifs, concepts, images must be linked; there must be no narrative residues or blind alleys. – The bike. The smell of rubber. The cereal bowl next to the coffee cup in the filled sink. The long hill to work. – Everything must carry meaning, refer to something, recur. Not one detail must be illustrative. Everything must exist for the sake of the whole. Everything must be borne in narrative. Everything must be made to speak. – The bike, the smell of rubber, the cereal bowl, the dirty coffee cup, the rooms of the flat, the hill: all that? – All that.

– But what if they are what cannot be borne by narrative? What if they are what cannot be made to speak? Resistance: the things of the world, as they resist. Resistance: is it because of their resistance I want to write of them? Nothing must be illustrative; but only because writing is only ilustration. Nothing must be illustrative; because nothing, in the end, can be borne in narrative.

History repeats itself first as tragedy then as farce (Marx). And when it repeats itself again?

Today is today, it is nothing but itself. The plants in the backyard, which should be stood up on bricks if their roots aren’t to rot, drain water debris across the concrete: what happened today? What has ever happened? The same room, the same day: how can you pass from hour to hour? There is no passage; the day returns as the day; today is today, there is no future. Today is today – what returns excepts the same, and the same of the same?

Who looks out from the mirror, his arms limp at his side? An old man, a man impossibly old. A man out of use, for whom the world never had a place. His gaze has congealed; it cannot reach me. And who do I see, in the failure of his seeing? My own blindness; the blindspot of sight. Whoever sees God dies; and whoever sees his own blindness?

Morning. What to write about? The double-glazed window that separates me from the yard. The cone of light from my desktop lamp, my keyboard and my monitor. The backyard, the damp concrete, the weed growing out of the wall, the dying plants. What will I write? Begin with nothing, or nearly nothing. Make a beginning. Mark your presence in the day. Make a mark to show you have been there in the day, as the days that open behind you each bear a mark.

I thought once that every day was the last day – thought there would be no more time, and the end was coming. Once I was one of the unemployed and the early retired, one of the sick and the stay-at-homes, each of us stranded in a world upon which we could find no purchase. I tried to forget the eventlessness of the morning in the eventfulness of television. And now?

With what confidence now do I rise each morning expecting to write and that there will be other such mornings in which I will write! With what temerity! I wonder if I have become what I would have once despised: bourgeois writer, the marker of days, confident that each morning he will stand once again at the head of the day. But I wonder, too, if it is only for such a bourgeois that writing is possible.

Bourgeois, liar, I am braced against non-eventfulness; soon I will roll my bike onto the pavement and cycle to work. Liar, faker, I will let the memory of unemployment return to me, rolling it around in my writing as a drinker rolls brandy in a glass. Vacant days, I know you, I remember you, but I am braced against you, and you will not find me now.

Vacant days, stagnant days, I could never have written of you then; you were too close; you were everywhere. But now you and I are not close; now I am separate from you and, in the morning, possessed of equal strength to you. In the afternoon, true, you will find me. The afternoon’s fog, my vagueness is your revenge. But understand that I will already have had the morning; I will already have marked my place by writing at the head of the day.

Leap into writing, write of this and that. Leap, and the day is only the occasional for writing. You push the day back; it is your launchpad, your anchor. You write, you blog, and the day is what bears you, the day is what allows you to begin. But what if the leap is interrupted? What if the power to leap withholds itself and there is strength only to mark the failure to begin?

What does it want with me, the day? To attest to itself? To summon a blindness correlate with its own blindness? To fog the glass of writing so that nothing is communicated? Breath on glass, opacity – you see what you once allowed you to see. The medium no longer mediates; the glass speaks, invisible surface. It speaks, boundary, of what separates the world from writing. It speaks, the mirror is fogged, a kind of blindness spreads across the surface of writing. So does it signal across signification what cannot be brought to speech.

Writing: remembrance, conservation. Writing remember and conserves, but what would I conserve? This yard, the drain water, the dying plants, this cup of coffee, this monitor, this keyboard: the same ‘facts’, the same as is present every morning? Or the act of writing as it is braced against these facts and against the blindness of the day? Does I summon the day, djinn, to write of it, or does it summon me, asking to be witnessed?

Every morning, the same; every day the same: rise, a cup of coffee, sit at the table, turn on the computer. The same, until the same is worn away by repetition. Until it is as though it tore itself apart and tore the day apart. The same frayed, the same torn across the sky. Then to fray the sky in turn – to write, to mark the happening of the day, the non-happening of the day, to write of what happens by not happening.

What would I conserve by writing? What would I remember? Or is it, by writing, a kind of forgetting might happen, not happen? Is it that nothing conserves itself, and marked in signs is what signals by not-signifying. The word today becomes an infinitive – the to day, the daying of the day – and the infinitive is attenuated as the day attenuates itself.

The not to day, the undaying of the day. The day as non-event. The day that did not happen. Nothing happens, but this non-happening is marked in writing. Nothing happens, the day resembles itself and I am called forward as one who would remember this nothing-is-happening. I summon nothing by writing. The day is not mine, it does not grant my wish. Not mine, it refuses my desires, it turns them aside.

I look through the window. The same yard, drain water in pools, drain debris, ill plants and the wheelie bin; two clothes-lines and the plant that grows out of the wall. Through the window, until the window mists. Until what I see is the misting of vision. Until it becomes the mirror that does not reflect me. And I am the vampire who cannot be reflected.

What do I see? The world as what I am not. Mute opacity. What do I write? Anonymous words, even as what I write here is gathered under the unity of a name. Now the words themselves seem arbitrary. Why these words? Why these words to name what I see – what I don’t see? How to name not only the things of the world, but the verb that bears these things? And how to name not the verb, the ‘to be’, but also their becoming, the infinite attenuation to which they answer?

Nouns dissolve, just as things dissolve. But now that dissolution will not let itself be named in the verb, or by being. Becoming, the becoming of being: now this is not a word, but a river, in which it is impossible to step even once. River in which what streams is the attenuation of the world. River of the nothing-is-happening.

Today, what has happened today? What does the day call for, today? Say the word today until it becomes unfamiliar. Write the word until it can provide no anchorage. No longer is the day the beginning place for writing. No longer does blogging anchor itself at the outset of the day. No longer can blogging summon the day as event; nor can you brace yourself against the beginning in order to launch yourself into writing.

Nothing begins. Writing, too, does not begin; it cannot clothe itself in incidents, it searches in vain for what would give it substance. But writing still says, mark what does not begin.  Mark the non-beginning of the beginning.

Morning Writing, Night Writing

Morning writing, night writing. Morning writing bears with it the old misery, but disgust is still lively, disgust can set out to seek and destroy, disgust is on the hunt. So is morning writing a kind of falconry. Disgust seeks its quarry. Disgust goes out to find its quarry, and so does morning writing carry with it something of the old misery. So does the old misery trail behind it like the tale of the comet. But the comet’s head is disgust, active and youthful, born to itself again and seeking its quarry again. Yes, disgust, in the mornings, is on fire as the sun is on fire. Disgust is the morning, the song of the morning.

Evening writing is wearied. Evening writing, wearied, is emburdened by the day, and all that has happened. Evening writing, enwearied, emerges, if it emerges, from what is crushed. It speaks of what is crushed. Disgust is tired; there’s no comet and no comet’s tail. Sometimes, it is true, there is a kind of wisdom. No longer falconry, no longer despair’s leap from your arm, no longer the seeking of the quarry. No more seek-and-destroy. But wisdom, instead, the days’ wisdom. As though you’d grown old in the passing of the day. As though by that day you had grown old with the day.

Tonight, disgust lies down in me. Tonight, the old misery is already asleep. Then I am always up too late – up too late, outliving misery and outliving disgust. No falconry. Disgust does not leave my arm. No comets; misery does not trail behind disgust. Today, the whole day spreads out before me. There it was, a whole day. What happened? This happened, that happened. What happened? This and that; the day turned, the planet turned into light and then dusk, and then, too early, into darkness. It was night too early. Night, at seven o’clock. Night at seven bells, too quick.

And now I wonder whether the events of the day, the whole comedy, happened only to bring near to me, signifying across signification, the night where the sign would be lacking. What happened? A great deal – and in the end? What happened, in the end? The sign lacks. It is night, and night brings forgetfulness. I’ve forgotten what happened – or it is that what happened happened such that something failed to happen. As though what happened as the events of the day failed to accomplish itself. Or that the day itself was incomplete, that it had been worn away, and what I come into contact with now, what draws me towards itself, is the non-event around which the day turns and every day turns.

The turning of the everyday. I would like to say, I learnt something today, I learnt something of the day and what happens when the day is over. I would like to say: night-writing comes after the day is complete and there are lessons to be drawn. But I know this is an alibi, and the day has not finished. I know what happened was the non-event of the day, its non-finishedness.

What began did not end. What began, in truth, did not even begin. What began did not begin; there was no event, or no event that completed itself. What began did not began, and what ended did not end. Night, but nothing has ended. Night, but the day has not completed itself. Night, and the day remains stranded, and for this reason, the night is also stranded. The day is stranded, it has not found and completed itself, and so too is the night stranded, because it cannot mark itself in its difference from the day; it is as though night lagged behind itself, and was too late for itself.

Dilatory night! Tardy night, incomplete and uncompletable! Tardy night, tardy day, how I can measure you? But I am measured by that delay, by that dilatoriness. It measures me, that delay; it is the wearing away of my day and the wearing away of my evening. It measures me, but only because it is without measure. It measures me, the measureless, as I am worn from myself. For the day does not support itself. What happens as the day does not support itself. It is incomplete and does not finish itself. The day does not round itself off. The day runs into the night, without completing itself. Day, night, both incomplete.

Measureless day, Measureless night

Measureless day, measureless night: who knows this, who experiences this? I have always known it and always experienced it. Write to mark time in the day. Write to stamp an hour on the night. Write to say: It is 9.52 PM, and I am writing. Write to stamp time on the occasion. But know that by doing so, what is night is already lost. As though night could only be expressed in the infinitive, the ‘to night’ and writing only as the ‘to write’. As if the ‘to night’ and the ‘to write’ were entwined, each in the other, each incompleting the other, each unbecoming the other.

So is writing likewise measured by the measureless. So is writing likewise the unmeasured, as it accords with the measurelessness of the night. Both unmeasured, both in lieu of themselves. Both in lieu of themselves, but by writing you have a way of measuring the night. For you can end the flood of signs, as you cannot end the night. That part of writing ends, as you cannot end the night. So do you come to terms with the night. So does the night offer itself to be written, and writing becomes your game with the night and your game with the day.

In the morning, it is different. The whole day opens before you. There is too much day ahead of you; it is still undiscovered, still the repository in which events might complete themselves. But later, at night, the whole day is that which incompletes itself. The whole day is unworking, and unworks itself in writing. The whole day is unworking, and the night is the unworking of the day. Night and day, unworking and writing the unworking of night and day.

Writing unworked and unworking: but this is a way of coming to terms with the non-happening of the day and the non-happening of the night. I know it as such; blogging is a transparent alibi. Blogging is already the attempt to stamp being on becoming, to stamp time on the timeless. It is 9:58; it’s dark; it’s been dark for some hours. 9:58, a glass of Cava, the heating on, clothes drying on the radiators. 9:59 – time has passed, but time is immobilised here, as I write.

Time arrested by writing. Time arrested, time recorded as though I were in control of time. I could say: nothing begins here, not at this blog. I could say: nothing ends here, not at this blog. But what I write is written in the box called ‘Post Introduction’; it begins and will end. Yes, it begins – it will end. But this is my alibi, this is my ‘why I write’ and it is a lie. Why blog? to mark time; to divide the infinite from itself – to substantiate the ‘there is the day’ and ‘there is the night’, or rather to allow that ‘there is …’ to resonate in writing.

There is writing

There is writing. Perhaps. There is writing – but only if it is a writing unworked, a writing unworkable. Yes, it happens – there is an event, but only if this event parts writing from itself and suspends writing, the happening of writing. There is writing. Writing attenuated. The ‘to write’ stretched across the day and the night: yes, this is the dream. Infinite attenuation, writing incomplete and unworked. Writing that unworks writing and wears it thin.

10:06. 24 minutes until Newsnight. Night; only the reflected room on the window. I can’t see the ugly yard. Blackness and then this room reflected in blackness. Blackness and this room, this little cube in the glass, reflected. The room, reflected. I do not see myself. I keep the curtain half-closed. I do not see myself, but what would I see? The darkness and then my reflection. Darkness and first of all the night, and the night’s darkness. As though I were Narcissus, but Narcissus, now, who saw what he was not. Night-Narcissus who sees what he is not, and loses himself by writing. Narcissus who resembles himself and resembles the night across which he sees himself. The night that does not complete itself. The night unworked.

The day does not support itself; the night does not support itself. Do not immobilise it in the form, ‘the day’, ‘the night’. Do not immobilise writing in writing. But this is what you have already done, which means your writing is always your writing. So do you betray the day, the night, and what fails to complete itself as the day, the night. So do you betray the ‘there is writing’ by writing. Begin, write, but know that by writing there is betrayal. Begin – end writing, end your post, press the button marked ‘save’, but know you’ve betrayed writing by writing.