Spurious

Your Letters

One afternoon, another. Any one was any other, they were all equally exchangable. And wasn't that true of us, too? Weren't we exchangable, infinitely exchangable, weighing nothing at all, swarming in the summer like midges? We were the same, each of us exactly the same. If one of us disappeared, another would come. We were replaceable, and this was our solace. We were anyone at all, and this was happiness.

How long ago was it now? Ten years and more than ten. But I wasn't any younger then. I can't say I lived through those times. I didn't understand what happened. I didn't know, how could I know? I was barely there. And you - were you there? What did we see in one another, then when we were no one at all? What was there to recognise? Only that, perhaps, only our looking like anyone else, like everyone else. I've never been so anonymous. Never fallen so far beneath my own name.

Later on, you sent me some letters. A few, not many. I lost them a long time ago. I must have thrown them away. I couldn't keep them. Couldn't bear that they lay face up in a drawer, the words staring upward. I neglected them, I remember that. They dwere lost among piles of newspapers. One had a coffee stain. A brown ring over the blue, faintly lined paper and the words. It didn't seem to matter to me. It seemed in keeping with what you wrote.

I don't think you said much. I mean, there wasn't much to read. Hadn't you told me everything already? Hadn't you told me about your life in those long, interchangable afternoons? I remember the cafe, pots of tea. We took the sun. We spoke. You told me ... what? About your life, the whole of your life. And I think I told you about mine.

How easy it was to sum up! It seemed to roll on far above me, my life. I wasn't living it. Someone else was living it. Someone who lived in my place, far from me. And I was content, content to be lived rather than live. And you? How did I find you, in those near-identical afternoons? How among the cafe goers who looked exactly the same? Someone was living your life, too, you told me. Someone was living in your place; you'd given up. And that was your happiness, that giving up.

They came later, those letters. We'd broken up, hadn't we? We didn't see each other anymore. What happened? When was the break? I'd gone back to work, I think. I'd started to work again; I was rising. I was working my way back into my life. I wanted it again. Wanted to live and in my own name, equal to it. And you, what of you? You fell away from me. You fell - but was it only because I was rising? Or was it that you were disappearing into a deeper current, that you'd found a falling below our falling, a deeper nothingness, a deeper anonymity?

I couldn't follow you there, I remember that. And I couldn't stay with you there, in those afternoons, those interchangable afternoons, I remember that. What else could we do but break up? It was late summer, wasn't it? Late summer passing into autumn. After a few weeks - one letter, then another. Then a few more.

Did I reply? Only to say little. Only to acknowledge your words, nothing more. To acknowledge them, as though only to repeat them back to you. To echo them, to amplify them, as though I were only a space for your words to resound. A few letters, handwritten, on blue, faintly lined paper. Envelopes addressed to me, with my name on the front, my address, and these letters, that seemed hardly concerned with me, that moved towards me only to move away.

They had nothing to do with me, I thought then. They were reaching towards what they could not reach, for I was not there where they wanted to find me. I had already left that place, that non-place. What did they say? Nothing, nothing at all. Nothing, nothingness, but by way of a few details, some pieces of news that concerned us and the people we knew.

The Railway Bridge

To tell the same story, over again. To tell the same and the same of the same: in this way, telling wears itself away. It becomes valueless, issueless; it begins to lift itself from the story and say nothing. Or it is as though the story floats indifferently over itself, like a soul that has left its body. And now the story doesn't matter; telling has outlived itself and what was told has expelled itself from the realm of narrative. A few incidents, nothing more. Some incidents, buried in writing, that remain amidst writing, that cannot be smoothed away.

Cycling through the new estates: why that image? I was unemployed, I remember that. I had an uncertain future, I remember that. I went out into the day, cycled, with no particular aim. Through the new estates, charting them, following them all the way to their edge. And then to what remained of the woodland - the brook whose banks had half dissolved; the muddy track along the field-edge. Bridleways and footpaths, that led down to the quarried river. And open lakes where the quarries once were: fenced off nature reserves. Over there, on the other side of barbed wire, wild life, kingfishers and herons. Near-still water that reflected back an indifferent sky.

No story here. Incidents without story, as though outside of themselves. Stranded events - a cyclist, the bland, wide day; the nothing-is-happening of the suburbs. Stranded life, life outside itself like the same near-still lakes spreading alongside the river. Life alongside life, ox-bow lakes and eddies, currents broken from the great flow of the city: how can narrative but break itself from the old models of continuity? How can a story but tell of what withers it as story, and places it alongside itself, an ox-bow lake, an eddy?

Through the new estates, cycling. Unemployed, off sick, one of the two. Absent from work, from life, cycling past new mothers with their prams. The omnipresence of the day, the afternoon. The vast cathedral of the sky. Later it would make me shiver. Later it would make me stay indoors. I came to fear the day, and unemployed time. Feared time without structure and journeys without aim. How old was I, then? Young enough still to retain a kind of optimism, a blindness in relation to the future. Still the hope that an estate might give unto something other than an estate, that leylines passed across the golfcourse, or that it was a barrow that rose behind the new houses. Still young - and still able to catch what happened in a story. Still young enough to believe it could be told.

Ill, unemployed - I was falling from the story; unemployed and ill, narrative lost sight of me. Whose eyes watched me? Who followed me? Writing eludes itself. The story does not move forward. The calm lakes of the nature reserve, dug out by quarrying. Birdsong; silence. But, too the greater roar of the afternoon. The sound of the day, reverberating in itself. No stories here. No narratives; one footstep does not lead to another; there's no path along which to pass. I come to the railway bridge; I carry my bike over. Piss-smelling concrete. Graffiti. And the power station by the railway. Houses and gardens higher up, stretched along the railway. The bend of the track along which trains came roaring. Was I ill? Was I unemployed?

Tell the same story, tell it again. Tell the same non-story, the same of the same, as it places what is recounted out of the reach of the story. A cancelled day; a blank and eroded sky. Was I ill - unemployed? Unemployed and ill?

The Cyclist

Cycling through the new estates. Cycling to find their interstices, the scrappy woodland along the railway, the rivers temporarily emerging from culverts, the private road through the plantation, the golf course green beneath rotating sprinklers. What was it that eluded me? For what was I looking? But this memory is now inseparable from recounting, and the search from what is sought by writing.

Writing eludes itself - is that it? Writing loses itself in order to become real, just as it is nothing without this reality. And it is this that tells itself in every tale, or untells them, wearing them out.

I cycled through the new estates, passed the old barrows and the glade of tree stumps left by forestry. I cycled beneath an indifferent sky. And the page, too is indifferent. The whiteness of the page burns indifferently in the sky above my cycling.

The Judgement

To be sentenced - punished. To be judged and punished, but for everything to remain the same. Curious dream. Why is it I imagine the white sky to be the judge, and the judgement? Because of its indifference. Because this is the judgement: You do not matter. That is the sentence: nothing you have done matters, not at all.

A recurrent memory: cycling around the new estates. Cycling through the gaps of countryside between the new estates, light falling indifferently upon all. And the feeling of being watched, and that I could not escape. That to be watched was to be judged, the judgement falling equally upon all. How light it was, the judgement! As light as air, the gentle pressure of air.

I carry my bike over the railway bridge. The white sky that sees nothing, but that sees. That sees from a source I cannot know, a perspective I cannot access. To be watched - seen - but in blindness. To be seen by the blindness of the sky, its indifference.

And when writing opened its eyes? The same perspective, the same non-seeing. And when the page burned up through my writing? The judgement, a trial and a sentence all at once. To say, you do not matter. To say, nothing you have done has ever mattered.

Thickening

Drink on the old sofa. Drink the cans until you have no more. And let it die away in you, that drunkenness. And let it come back, the same numbed boredom, empty cans and sweet, stale beer spilled on the carpet.

What time is it? Eleven o'clock. What time, morning or night? Curtains closed against the day. Why is that brightness unbearable? Why is half-light the way to endure the turning of days?

The same, I live in the same. Without memory, it would be bearable. And with memory, that deepens the events of each day, that sinks them still further into themselves?

Sweet, stale beer. The sofa; afternoon TV. Curtains closed. Cat litter on the carpet. Stale gingerbread men from the discount Greggs.

Deep time, doubled time, days thickening as they are lived in series. My bare feet on the nylon carpet. The curtain beginning to fall from the rail: it's happened before; it will happen again.

Time deepened, instants thickened: this has happened before; this will happen again. Distant pain. But who bore it? Who endured that pain? In truth, I was too tired to bear it. How to coincide with what was not my own? But then, in that house, in the half-light, what was my own?

Time thickened, instants turned outside themselves. Thickened - until each moment was lived in series. I will live it again. It will happen again - but to whom? To me?

Spilt beer, cat litter. The beer spilled. My bare feet on cat litter. Instants, now, that would not pass. They will come again; they will happen again. But for whom?

You were coming, weren't you? You were arriving, weren't you, coming as time thickened, avid for the thickening of time. You were coming, blurred one. You saw me.

(And I saw you in the film last night. A Scanner, Darkly. You were wearing a scramble suit. Scrambled, every person at once and no one at all, you were watching me.)

I saw you, watcher. I saw you watching me in me. I saw you, sufferer. I knew what you underwent for me. In the half-light, curtains closed, you were coming. Called by stale beer and cat litter, you were coming.

Scanner, thickening, I knew you by way of what would not leave itself behind. By the instants that returned and were thickened in their returning. Opened now like flowers, into the streaming of time.

Inside

You phone me, panicked. - 'I can't leave the house; I'm stuck here. I can't leave the house!' Okay, I'm coming round. Out of the door, over the bridge. Your house. 'I can't leave.' The old, blind collie, eyes almost gone out. The Aga. The long dining room table.

They want you out, they've told you. They're expecting you to leave. You're already supposed to have left. But there's a family celebration coming soon. Family coming from all over the country, and you're not family, are you? A tenant, but not family, you know that. A tenant - you'll have to leave, won't you? But today you can't even step out of the front door.

We're in the house, the enormous house. So vast! A family house! A garden. The Aga. The old collie. The family are out. 'I need to get to the bus stop'. - 'Sure, let's go.' - 'I can't go, I can't go anywhere.' - 'Come on, we'll take it slowly. Let me open the door.' Daylight streams in. - 'I'm going to stay here, I think. I can't go out today.'

You've been served notice. Served it in a friendly way, but they need the room, and you've got to go. But how can you move out when you can't get out of the door? How when you are too sick to open the door and too sick for the open air? In streams the daylight.

'They don't want me here.' - 'They just want the space, that's all.' - 'Where am I going to go?' - 'You'll find somewhere. It'll be okay.' Drinking tea in the dining room. The long table - how many does it sit? The house around us - so vast.

'Do you think either of us will have a place like this?' - 'No way.' Not a chance, not for us. I look around - room for everyone. Everyone can come here, the whole family. The whole family, round the table. Everyone but us, round the table.

Hibernating

We're out for a drink, a rare drink. I haven't seen you since - when? I won't see you again until - when? Out for a drink, then. Out in the bar for a drink. - 'What have you been doing?' - 'Oh - you know. Smoking. Staying in. Not doing much. Just staying in. Smoking. I'm a bit tired of everything, really.' - 'What are you going to do?' - 'I don't know. Might go back to college -'.

Out for a drink. Afternoon, five o'clock, still light. Haven't seen you for ages. 'How are you?' -  'I've been feeling so tired lately. I don't know what it is. I think I'm ill.' - 'You look thin.' - 'I'm not eating - I'm off my food. Off everything, really. Maybe it's the time of year. February, you know. So depressing.'

A drink, late afternoon to early evening. February, the last time I saw you, the first time I'd seen you for a long time, your torn jumper, your cigarettes. 'Any plans?' - 'I don't know - I can't get it together. I'm so tired. And bored - you know. Just smoking, really. Every night. Too much, really -'.

Out for a drink. Old friend, haven't seen her for a long time. Still pretty. 'How are you?' - 'Okay, okay - not been up to much. Haven't been out for ages. Holed up for the winter. Hibernating.'

In the bar. 'How are you?' - 'Just bored really. Not doing anything. Smoking - that's about all.'

The bar, February afternoon. 'What are you doing?' - 'Nothing really. Might get an allotment.' - 'Aren't you going back to college, then?' - 'No, don't fancy it. Sick of studying. But tired of everything really -. I want some time out.'

'How's it going?' - 'Alright, you know how it is. I hate winter. I'm hibernating.'

The Idiot

I am not a spokesman for anyone else, God knows, I would like just to be a spokesman for myself! To be that, just that: a spokesman for myself, that would already be enough. What did you expect when you asked me those questions? What did you want from me, with your questions? Did you think I could answer you? Did you think I could summon myself to the edge of myself and answer you? But I cannot speak for myself, that's what I wanted to say. I cannot even speak for myself.

My tongue is too thick, it is too big for my mouth. And there's my stammer, remember that. I can barely squeeze a word from mouth, and when I speak - whose word is it? When it is spoken, when words are spoken from my mouth, whose are they? For they are not mine. I cannot speak, I know that - and what I say is not speaking. I will not say a word. No words - not one, not two. I am not the spokesman of myself. I speak for no one, and not even myself.

You'd like to ask me questions, I know that. There are questions to extract from me, I know that, too. It's your job, it's nothing personal. You bear me no particular grudge. It's not between you and I, two people, I know that. Is that why you're so friendly? Is that why it's all first names and shaking hands? Nothing personal - but still, the questions. Nothing personal, but there are questions to ask, and we might as well get it over with.

I am to be assessed. For how long have I been sick? I can't remember. For how long have I been claiming them, the benefits? That, too, I can't remember. If you force me, I will speak. I will say something, but in so doing, I've said nothing, and that's what you have to understand. I cannot speak - understand that. I cannot say a word - can you understand that? Or when I speak, those words are not mine. There is speech, but look at my eyes - look at them, imploring. Eyes which say, ignore what is being said by that, the mouth. Which say: no one can speak for me, not even myself.

I am not my own spokesman, and I will not be my advocate. I am not in my own corner as counsel or advisor. Am I a member of my own prosecution? Not even that. Nor even a case for or against. Because I cannot speak - I cannot say a word for or against. Do you understand that, you who would ask questions of me? Do you understand, interrogator? I know I'm taking too much of your time. I know you have more of us to see, other clients - that's what they call us now. I know you'll be gauged according to your success for getting us back to work. No promotions for you, otherwise. And perhaps you'll not be able to keep your job. Perhaps, one day, you'll be in the position I occupy, I who cannot speak in my own name.

Deal with me then. Fill out the form. I will give you answers, any answers, but understand they are not my answers. Understand - I do not speak for myself. Everyone speaks, they are always speaking, there is speech everywhere, but I am the one who speaks without speaking. Unless everyone is like me, unless there are no speakers, and none of speak. Unless I am the only one who sees it; I am the one to whom it falls to experience it. I have no words. I speak - but they are not mine, those words. And I have no name, I who have fallen beneath all names.

My body says no. My body refuses. My body's is the dark word of negation. And what does your body say? In what words does it speak? Does it struggle with you? Does it struggle against you and leap up against you so you know every word you speak is a lie? Does it ever turn upon you and say: 'I will not', except without those words, without the 'I - will - not'?

How old am I? I have no age. Where am I? I am everywhere; my body is joined to the body of the world. Why do they want us to speak? Why is speech demanded of us? Why must accounts be rendered and these great structures impose themselves between us? I want to say to my questioner, you have a body like mine. I want to say, our bodies are joined, do you understand that? I will say, there are no words, and these are not words, only words that undo words. Only anti-words, which uncurl themselves in the ones in your sentences. Only the weight of words, their idiom, as every sentence falls in upon its own heaviness and draws the world into it.

No words, and no silence - not even that. No words, and not even the consolation of silence. Who am I, who speaks? The same no one who is writing now. The no one who, through the mercy of strength, is able for a few moments to write of what he cannot do. Who, strong for a moment, writes words that would undo themselves as they are written. Double negation: this post would be the white snow. This post would be a twig or a wall, obdurate and thing-like, contracting upon itself and taking with it the world, the whole of the world.

They're going to dock our money, £10 for the first interview we miss and £20 for the second. We'll be interviewed, each one of us, up against the wall. But why don't they know - I can barely speak of myself? Why isn't it clear to them: I am not even my own spokesman? Idiot - that's the word. Barbarian - that's the word.

But there are more like me, you should know that. There are others, too, like me - know that. Each of us bears all of the others, know that. Eliminate one and the others will come. Pass us through training, process us and send us back to the world, there are always others to be trained and processed. But that doesn't bother you, does it? Questioner, interrogator, you know you are not a member of the S.S., but part of a vast, benevolent army. There is love in your eyes; you're thinking of me - you're sympathetic. And in my eyes, that give onto nothing in particular? What do you know by them - my eyes?

He needs a job, you tell yourself. He needs to get off the sick, and that first of all. He needs confidence, you say to yourself. He needs to return to the world. But what do you know of my needs? What do you know of the size and the shape of my desire? For it is without contour, my desire, and without shape. We are stretched from horizon to horizon, each of us. Our bodies are taut, and stretched across the horizon. We are each the size of the world. That's what I want to say, though I can say nothing. That's what I'd like to say, if I could speak in my name.

The Other Side of the Glass

The Other Side of the Glass

Unemployed, fallen from work, from the chance of work, the day leads nowhere, the dole is the bridge across the days and the weeks; you are the object of crackdowns and tightening-ups, you receive home visits from the housing officer. Then your payments are delayed and you travel on the bus you cannot afford to town to wait in line, but what a line, to see the civil servants about your housing claim. You are on the other side of the glass, you can barely make yourself understood, you speak loudly to be heard and asked to be spoken to loudly so that you can hear, but the separating window prevented you from understanding and from being understood.

They know you, in the dole office. They know you, at the council. They know, and that's why they separate themselves from you by a window. They know, they are prepared, they've taken measures, you are made to take a ticket from the machine and wait in the foyer, wait at the margins, wait in the corridors between rooms, wait in those spaces that are not quite rooms, wait in the chairs each set aside the other, wait and shift seats when others ahead of you are called, they are ready for you, they don't want to be touched by you, they don't want physical contact, or to breathe the same air as you.

Violence will not be tolerated. Attacks on staff will lead to prosecution. Yes, it's understandable, some of us are violent, some too impatient, I'm frightened of them sitting beside me with WHITE written each letter across the knuckles of one hand and POWER on the knuckles of the other, I don't want to sit near them with the tattoos that curl up from their teeshirts and around their necks, I wouldn't want to be as close to them as I am, I wouldn't trust them, I wouldn't want to deal with them - listen to them talk, they can barely talk, they threaten and they growl, they brood and they resent, and you, civil servant, I know you want to be pleasant and patient and kind, you are sympathetic and empathetic, you want to help us, those who are called your clients, you want to help the job seekers find jobs and make the payments to those who want housing benefit, you want to run through the long forms they have fill out, you want to make sure everything is okay, even as you want, at the same time, to be separate from us, your clients, from those who are on the other side of the glass.

Ah, civil servant, for all your good will and attentiveness, for all your training and people management, you sense our stagnancy, you sense in us what has not begun, you sense what cannot begin, what is deficient or excessive, you know in us what you must not know. You know we are stagnant, and that our stagnancy threatens to run into the streaming of your life, the cool water of your life, its cool streaming. You know with what we might infect you, that our disgusting lives might run into yours, might pollute your days and your nights. You know our stagnancy is close to running into the clear stream of your life, you know if you came closer, you would say to your partner when you came home from work, it's all too much, you would say it because you had come too close to us, not like Icarus with the sun, the opposite in fact, not like one who tried to rise, but one, rather, who was compelled to sink, who could do nothing but sink, who fell without wanting to fall, who was infested and invaded, befouled and besmirched, whose clear stream of life was flooded with our stagnant waters. Oh I know you, civil servant, I know and understand what is happening on the other side of the glass.

Beneath Time

The Blind Sky

Simone Weil: God's great crime against us is to have created us; it is the fact of our existence. And our existence is our great crime against him.

Unemployment's great crime against us is to have made us; it is the fact of our existence. And our existence is our great crime against unemployment. Unemployed, we are beneath time, subjected to it. That is why routine is so important. Wake up at a set hour, never later than ten, if you wake at ten-thirty, disaster, but before ten and you are okay, better still if you wake before nine. But before ten is sufficient, there is the whole day ahead of you, but at ten you are not yet beneath time, you do not fear time, you take a stand at the head of the day. Before ten, and you have a chance to get something done, the day still holds promise, outside, faraway, the world is working, a great deal is happening, but for you, nothing has begun, you are square in the time before the beginning, ready for the day.

After ten, and around ten-thirty, you've lost the day, it's already too far ahead of you. How can you catch up? The day will have to be endured rather than lived. You will get no purchase on the day; time does not offer you a foothold. You will suffer from time and you will not cease suffering from it. But before ten, you still have a chance, there's still promise, the morning leads up to lunchtime, and lunchtime finishes with Neighbours, and then's the afternoon, always too long, but in the evening, the workers come home, it's time for the news. True, there is the afternoon, but if you get up early, the afternoon can be dealt with, there's always a way of bracing yourself against it, always an activity you can invent for yourself.

Unemployed, I would cycle to town to do nothing but wander. Unemployed, town was the place where wandering was possible, where attention was absorbed sufficiently that you did not suffer from time, where there was enough variety, enough events to occupy you. True, they came from without, those events, they happened to you, you were not their origin, but at least something happened, which it does not in the suburbs. Town is for events; passing through town, inventing errands for yourself, you experienced the forward movement of time, time passing.

But eventually, before rush hour, you would have to go home. Eventually, it is time to cycle home and there is the risk of that terrible passivity which brings time towards you. Eventually, you find yourself not above but beneath time, in the eternity of the everyday, in the eternity beneath time as beneath the blank, white sky. You had no chance! Time was waiting for you, it knew you, the whole sky was its eye, looking for you.

But this all-seeing, all-knowing eye is a blind eye, its whiteness whiteness of the sky is the whiteness of blindness. It sees without seeing - it sees and you are seen by no one; no one sees you, no one is watching out for you, it is not even that you are alone, you are not even that, for what is witnessed is your disarray.

Now there is no boundary between you and the everyday. Seen is your dispersal, as though you had fallen like snow across the whole of the Thames Valley. The sky sees the whole Thames Valley and sees you spread across the Thames Valley, the whole Thames Valley that you are, the spreading-across that is all you are. Just as Prufrock was spread across the sky, so you are spread across the Thames Valley and the sky is spread above you. As you are spread across, so is the sky spread above you. And you look up to where you are seen, and the sky sees you, even as there is nothing to looks and no one to see. Even though what is seen is only your nothingness, your scattering. So does nothing see into nothing. So does unemployment see itself and see too much.

Who am I? Who was I? The one witnessed by unemployment, the one in whom unemployment saw itself. I was not made by unemployment in its image, but unmade in its image. I was undone in its image, the image of unemployment. Who was I? The one undone by unemployment in the image of its perpetual undoing. Who was I? Undone by unemployment, dispersed by unemployment, unemployment sought to know me as it knew itself. So did unemployment suffer from me as it saw itself in me. So did it suffer as it saw its truth. Unemployment tried to pass me, to void me from its body. I knew I was to be voided; unemployment suffered from my existence. It suffered as it knew its crime against me was to have created me; my existence was my great crime against unemployment.

Ten Thirty

It's ten thirty, I've woke up too late, I stayed up too late, and now I've woken too late. Ten thirty, this is a bad start, the world's already left me behind, time's left me behind. Ten thirty and I live in the wake of time, and there's no catching up. Should I rush? Should I go quickly downstairs and go out? Should I get the cycle out of the shed and ride into the day? But it is too late; I've missed my appointment with the day, I've missed my chance, the day and I are no longer on equal terms. The day knows this. The sky is white, but when I look up at the sky above the trees, I see that it is moving with great, imperturbable confidence. It has won, it knows it can only win, that eventually I slip and rise too late.

The day is a glistening surface without purchase. It is the smooth wall of a pyramid without surface. I cannot climb, I cannot ascend, there are no footholds. Should I read? Should I take down a book from the bookshelf and begin to read? But I will not be able to read a line. The sky is already in the page, waiting for me. The sky is already looking up at me from the page, I am seen, I am scorned, I am laughed at. The imperturbable day is already there in the white page.

What chance do I have? Always the effort to rise earlier than the day, to wake early enough to discover its ruses and its secrets. Always the dream to catch out the day, to observe the celestial takeover, to see night as it changes into the day (the day did not come first!). That's why I used to stay up, past three, past four, to the dawn. I used to stay up until dawn and then sleep after dawn. Until I discovered that to rise late was to have no chance, that to rise at twelve, at twelve thirty, was to destroy all hope of resisting the day, that the day would win and could only win.

The Great Destroyer

Neighbours is the hinge of the day, its articulation. Neighbours, from 1.30 to 1.50 is the true noon; noon lies at its centre. To watch Neighbours is to know the morning has become the afternoon. Neighbours is the turning point, it is fate. The afternoon has come; it opens after Neighbours. True, there are other programmes to watch after Neighbours. But who wants to watch Columbo in the afternoon? It's too old a programme, it comes from the past, and you should never watch old programmes in the day. It comes from the 70s, and you should only watch contemporary programmes in the day. It takes enough effort to remain contemporary without watching programmes from the past.

Neighbours is contemporary, and so is This Morning. Watch and you are up to date, you are up on current affairs, on the lives of the celebrities, on actors and actress doing the rounds, on authors doing the rounds, on pop stars and film stars doingthe rounds. With Neighbours, something is always happening, there's always a cliffhanger. Always suspense, always events which lead to suspense, to the brink of the next programme. The new episode of Neighbours begins with the last moments of the previous episode; it orientates you. Aha, you say, that's what happened. You never think of Neighbours when you are not watching Neighbours, but when it returns, when another episode begins, you are orientated, prepared, you remember what happened in the previous episode and in the last run of episodes.

Neighbours remembers itself in you. At the turning point of the day Neighbours sets itself back into your memory. Neighbours happens; Neighbours unfurls out of itself. Neighbours emanates from itself, and it is only emanation. Perpetual event, perpetual unfolding, Neighbours is always hungry for new events, for new sensation; it is unstable; it is instability itself; happiness must be destroyed, the 'solid' family at its heart must be torn apart. Time is merciless in Neighbours. Time, the thirst for events, is the great destroyer. But what is it that destroys? The same everyday that destroys me; the same non-event that seeks to hide itself in events; the turning over of the great non-event of the everyday.

It is the everyday that is the navel of Neighbours, its centreless centre. The need for the events in Neighbours is the need for the everyday to give form to itself. It is the everyday that holds itself as a kind of reserve in Neighbours, which holds itself behind every event that comes forward. But the everyday cannot happen; it calls for events, but cannot occur. The everyday is non-event, it is unemployment which seeks only itself as non-event. All the events of Neighbours turn around this same non-event, the event which cannot come to completion, the happening which cannot round itself off, but always returns to happen again.

The everyday is the navel of Neighbours; Neighbours is the navel of the everyday.