Spurious

Regret

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

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

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

Failure

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

The Last Neanderthal

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

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

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

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

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

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

Forward Movement

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

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

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

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

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

Sit This One Out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Line Drawn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Slug's Trail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Adversary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Placekeepers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Affront

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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