Lack of perspective

You know what our problem is? I tell X. Lack of perspective. We’re like a drunk rolling around looking for his glasses. Or an animal tapped in a well. Isn’t that what we’ve been told in so many words, by so many people? If only we had perspective! I say. To have minds that opened up beyond ourselves, beyond our bedrooms, beyond our flat. Over the sprawling broads, across the seas and into space, beyond space and into God himself.

Kingfisher farm cider

Kingfisher farm cider in a music-free pub. Does it get better? No, we agree. At last we can relax, at last we can think, we agree. A few sips in and it feels like we’ve gone to our reward, we agree. We want to stay here forever. Unfortunately there’s only one pub that’s music-free and only one pub that serves Kingfisher farm cider. Fortunately we’re in it. Hoo, I’d forgotten how heady this stuff is, I say. Lightweight, says X. What was it the publican said that time? I say. Sponsored by NASA, says X contentedly. Best drink ever, he says. An epic drink, I agree. And no music! Does it get better? Like mountain air. Crisp and flat and pure and cold and dry. The very distillation of applehood. Dewy dawns in Edenic orchards! Some day I’ll write an ode to Kingfisher cider, I say, some day I’ll give it the ode it deserves. Whatever, says X, get me another one, will you? OK but you won’t walk right, I say… My ears have gone weird, I say later, I can’t hear anything, what’s this stuff doing to me? Relax, he says, stay calm and take it steady like I told you. It won’t turn against you if you stay calm.

Worry

I worry, I tell X. I worry about worrying too much and when I don’t worry I worry about not worrying enough. Perhaps I shouldn’t worry at all. But that would be an extremely worrying situation, as indeed it is when I don’t worry, when I let myself go (but don’t I let myself go when I worry?). I worry that I spend too much time with you, and I worry that if I didn’t, things would be even more worrying for me, not to mention for you. It’s as if I have to worry for the both of us, perhaps even for others. If I don’t worry who will? I say. If I don’t worry it’s certain the speaker will flub his lines, the plane will crash, the world will end. Do you worry? I say. Or do I worry for us both?

When will we understand?

When will we understand? I ask X. There is no understanding, he says. We’d have to step outside of everything to understand. We’d have to step out of our stupidity, out of ourselves.

I can’t take you anywhere

I can’t take you anywhere, I tell X. You just stand there with your dead eyes. People get embarrassed. Sometimes they get angry. Then I have to try to smooth things over because you won’t or can’t. I look like a fool and you berate me for it.

Too late

We came too late, I say. Our first word was too late. What did we do? Something bad happened, something was destroyed so we could come and say our first word, which was already too late.

*

Late for what? We don’t know. Our first word delayed us, plunged us into lateness, that’s all we know. Are we responsible? Something disappeared when we began to find the words for it, that’s all we know.

*

We were born into the world by violence and by a stranger violence we reclaimed it. Then the words themselves began to disappear and the real farce began. Aren’t our lives synonymous with this triple fall?

*

What should we have done? We shouldn’t be here, says X. But what’s to be done now? How do we use the power that was given to us, that we claimed so greedily? Can we even use it? It seems to fall apart in these very words. We shouldn’t even be here, says X, we shouldn’t have come.

*

How do we restore what dies for us? We endure by an ancient violence, we know no other way. If we can’t go back we must die too, X says, die even more strangely than we began, together with what our words destroy.

*

But how to give up words when words are all we have? The answer is in the question, one of us says. Let the trail of ink have its way, let the words dispense with us. Let what was killed in our names, which we can no longer even name, resurrect itself in these words: our words without us.

In danger

We’re in danger on two fronts, X and I agree. Of going too far inside but also of being pulled too far outside. Inside where we fall into dead time, outside where we’re exposed as liars, cowards, perverts, overexposed… in a bleached light… We face the same danger on both fronts, we agree, we have to walk a narrow line so we don’t lose ourselves and cease to separate inside from out. But there are good ways to lose yourself too, aren’t there, I ask, necessary ways? They don’t care how we do it, says X, it’s all the same to them. But aren’t there ways even they haven’t discovered, that they can’t get to? I ask. It’s possible, he says.

The intellectuals 2

I’ve been thinking about those intellectuals who embarrassed me because of you, I tell X, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t care. Aren’t we all in the same leaking boat? At last you talk some sense, says X.

Back on the margins

We’re back in our old town, whose size and pace is more suitable for the likes of us; back in the margins where we belong. We’re content. For now, says X. Now we can breathe again. Well you can, says X. We’re getting things done we’ve been meaning to do for years! I say. We’re not lying about in our pyjamas! It’s spring! A little breath of air, X concedes, but don’t be fooled, it’s just the change of scene talking, you felt the same way when we moved away. What did we do all that time we were away, I say, can you remember? Not really, he says. Were we happy? I ask. Were we even alive? Stay calm, he says, you’ll probably feel the same way when we leave this place.

The intellectuals

I met some intellectuals at the pub after work today, I tell X, and told them some of the things you’ve told me to see what they’d say. They laughed. What did you expect? he says. I don’t know. They told me you’re out of date. Out of what date? Did you tell them to go fuck themselves? No, I listened, and so should you, I say. You embarrassed me, I say.