Me n my Chinese friend Jay go to the petshop to buy goldfish.
And rayed along the walls more like a petting zoo are meek cats and long-faced Afghan hounds that nod and avoid your eye.
Some dogs that back off when you approach them but then when you show you mean well let you embrace them, stroke their furry backs, feel the flip of their tails, their arch and curl. Black dogs, anonymous brown dogs, thin ones with ribs showing, reclining white ones with thick fur.
Dogs never look you in the eye. It's a threat amongst dogs, as is the baring of teeth. After all this time they have only fitfully adapted to life amongst humans. They merely put up with your embraces.
I tell Jay that I was born in the Year of the Cat. He tells me that the Chinese character in this case actually means "small furry animal with a weak back".
Saturday 26 January 2013
In the army barracks
In the army barracks, prison block of the new recruits.
60's functional architecture, godless and soulless. A main housing block and two outflung wings. Sounds: Coughs of angsty recruits and swing and clutter of cagedoors shutting at dusk.
And all the army newboy recruits are snoring except for one newly-shorn recruit. He lies facedown and bellydown on the rough sheet and embraces his pillow, screwing up his eyes and burying his face in the coarse grey material. At length he drops off but then awakens again when his own fitful snores are mistaken by him for the far-off cries of men echoing in the dormitory, like cries of battle. Near him sleep peacefully, as though dead, worn-our crewcut recruits, tangled in their blankets, feet jutting out at strange angles.
Now day is already breaking and from his bed he gazes out of the large window down past the perimeter of the barracks to the scrubby semi-rural semi-suburban wasteland beyond...
Between the angles of an electricity pylon and a wire fence and a grey administrative building in concrete is a grassy mound and a trickling stream, that in a burst of early morning sunshine seems like a rural idyll, a mini-Eden, to him in his captivity.
And now early to the nearby college dorm steps a statuesque and proud college girl, a brunette neatly and primly dressed, framed by the electricity pylon and the corners of the admin building, and seen by the soldier as though on a catwalk, jauntily stepping. She loves to taunt and encourage the awakening soldiers, who whistle and call out at their grey windows, this girl with her grotesquely proud and chubby face, her shapely calves, her lively, downturned grin. Something to tell the girls about later.
And she looks up at the high windows of the barracks, raising her skirt to show off her legs, patting her behind, mouthing words, seen distant in the early sunshine, pale and fresh.
-Is she an angel or a devil? Still lying face down on his mattress, the insomniac's hand passes below to between his legs.
60's functional architecture, godless and soulless. A main housing block and two outflung wings. Sounds: Coughs of angsty recruits and swing and clutter of cagedoors shutting at dusk.
And all the army newboy recruits are snoring except for one newly-shorn recruit. He lies facedown and bellydown on the rough sheet and embraces his pillow, screwing up his eyes and burying his face in the coarse grey material. At length he drops off but then awakens again when his own fitful snores are mistaken by him for the far-off cries of men echoing in the dormitory, like cries of battle. Near him sleep peacefully, as though dead, worn-our crewcut recruits, tangled in their blankets, feet jutting out at strange angles.
Now day is already breaking and from his bed he gazes out of the large window down past the perimeter of the barracks to the scrubby semi-rural semi-suburban wasteland beyond...
Between the angles of an electricity pylon and a wire fence and a grey administrative building in concrete is a grassy mound and a trickling stream, that in a burst of early morning sunshine seems like a rural idyll, a mini-Eden, to him in his captivity.
And now early to the nearby college dorm steps a statuesque and proud college girl, a brunette neatly and primly dressed, framed by the electricity pylon and the corners of the admin building, and seen by the soldier as though on a catwalk, jauntily stepping. She loves to taunt and encourage the awakening soldiers, who whistle and call out at their grey windows, this girl with her grotesquely proud and chubby face, her shapely calves, her lively, downturned grin. Something to tell the girls about later.
And she looks up at the high windows of the barracks, raising her skirt to show off her legs, patting her behind, mouthing words, seen distant in the early sunshine, pale and fresh.
-Is she an angel or a devil? Still lying face down on his mattress, the insomniac's hand passes below to between his legs.
Friday 18 January 2013
Case study 2
So you take to walking. The walls begin to close in on you, so you flee them. You gain the empty streets. It is now that you notice a very curious effect, one which relates to your fellow humans. You begin to lose comprehension of them. Their movements and words and ideas begin to seem odd. You see them, of course, engaged on their various errands. You see people in cars, briefly glimpsed. You see couples arm in arm. You see groups of friends, gaily chatting, confident in numbers. You see the blue light of televisions in livingrooms, curtain-obscured, plant-shrouded.
But all they do and say seems impossibly remote from you, much more remote than, say, an animal could ever be. A dog will still deign to sniff you, a cat may flirtatiously rub itself against you. They recognise a fellow creature. But these awful, smug humans, with their hideous selfishness, their pathetic privacy. How they avoid your eyes. How they dwell in illusion, how they artlessly construct and live in fantasy worlds. What can they possibly be thinking? What on earth are their motivations? You gaze at them as though you were behind a wall of glass, and they were all conversing eagerly in a totally foreign language.
Now, the former strange pauses, the feelings of something left undone, begin to expand and occupy more space. They combine with your forgetting of the language of social interaction, and well up at random moments. In the middle of the day, engaged in some commonplace task, washing up some dishes, say, you suddenly halt and struggle to get your bearings, as though lost.
Now is when the solitary man finds himself becoming odd. Sometimes on his nocturnal walks he murmurs to himself, or the interlocutor in his head. Often, now, he listens anxiously at night, trying to detect some texture in the silence, as though it was a blank stone wall that somehow bore a message. As though the silence were the pop and hiss of a needle on an ancient 45, and at any moment, some faint music would emerge. One night, the solitary man waits at a crossing for the light to change to green. It is midnight. He has walked up the long way from his empty flat through streets where seagulls fight over scraps. Suddenly, standing there, he says aloud "I am going mad".
Naturally, this frightens him very much.
But all they do and say seems impossibly remote from you, much more remote than, say, an animal could ever be. A dog will still deign to sniff you, a cat may flirtatiously rub itself against you. They recognise a fellow creature. But these awful, smug humans, with their hideous selfishness, their pathetic privacy. How they avoid your eyes. How they dwell in illusion, how they artlessly construct and live in fantasy worlds. What can they possibly be thinking? What on earth are their motivations? You gaze at them as though you were behind a wall of glass, and they were all conversing eagerly in a totally foreign language.
Now, the former strange pauses, the feelings of something left undone, begin to expand and occupy more space. They combine with your forgetting of the language of social interaction, and well up at random moments. In the middle of the day, engaged in some commonplace task, washing up some dishes, say, you suddenly halt and struggle to get your bearings, as though lost.
Now is when the solitary man finds himself becoming odd. Sometimes on his nocturnal walks he murmurs to himself, or the interlocutor in his head. Often, now, he listens anxiously at night, trying to detect some texture in the silence, as though it was a blank stone wall that somehow bore a message. As though the silence were the pop and hiss of a needle on an ancient 45, and at any moment, some faint music would emerge. One night, the solitary man waits at a crossing for the light to change to green. It is midnight. He has walked up the long way from his empty flat through streets where seagulls fight over scraps. Suddenly, standing there, he says aloud "I am going mad".
Naturally, this frightens him very much.
Case study 1
I am definitely not a misanthrope.
I call myself a lover of mankind, and I try to act as such. But it's true that mankind eludes me. I see nothing in men but rivalry, gliding like ghosts to their errands. I know for sure I am not like them. As for women, they are a blank. They are and remain a problem, even to themselves. They are a riddle. Watch them slouch with shopping-bags through streets. What can they be thinking?
And so it is that I, estranged from man, am cast among them, slowly, ponderously walking, through an autumnal town centre, in a post-industrial city. To an office building I go, and ascend the bare steps up to Level 3. The place smells like a hospital, and is so scrupulously clean that one has an urge to defile it. After standing at a plastic podium for a while, jabbing my finger on a touchscreen, my name is called and a small, curiously twisted woman with a faint moustache moves a slip of paper in front of me, which I sign with my name. This is my life and cross to bear.
I was explaining to someone, some interlocutor in my head, "I used myself as a case study. Effects of solitude on the human person. One goes through phases. First of all, one feels liberated. The mind is refreshed and acute. The deliciousness of the solitary vices, the solitary virtues, are happily indulged in. Lust and philosophy, life and history as joyful, diminutive games, played on the blank wall of the mind. Everything incommunicable and private, everything endogenous and subjective, can be revelled in. At first these encounters with the bare self are unchallenging.
After a while though, usually late at night, one suddenly finds in oneself, arising unbidden, a curious, hateful dismay. One discovers it like one would discover a cavity in a back tooth, with a sort of disgust and shame, and at the same time, a morbid curiosity about the sources and progress of the decay. It comes at bedtime, as a strangely definite sense that one has left something undone. It is when one tries to pinpoint exactly what has been left undone, that one becomes puzzled. Why can't I happily sleep, fold etc. to bed? And then the whole, stark truth wells up at you. I haven't lived. I haven't lived today. Something, some opportunity or other, has somehow been missed, or rather, it never arose, and this not arising, this failure of phenomena to appear, this absence, is felt like a presence, like a ghost in the room which stands all night by your bed and prevents sleep.
I call myself a lover of mankind, and I try to act as such. But it's true that mankind eludes me. I see nothing in men but rivalry, gliding like ghosts to their errands. I know for sure I am not like them. As for women, they are a blank. They are and remain a problem, even to themselves. They are a riddle. Watch them slouch with shopping-bags through streets. What can they be thinking?
And so it is that I, estranged from man, am cast among them, slowly, ponderously walking, through an autumnal town centre, in a post-industrial city. To an office building I go, and ascend the bare steps up to Level 3. The place smells like a hospital, and is so scrupulously clean that one has an urge to defile it. After standing at a plastic podium for a while, jabbing my finger on a touchscreen, my name is called and a small, curiously twisted woman with a faint moustache moves a slip of paper in front of me, which I sign with my name. This is my life and cross to bear.
I was explaining to someone, some interlocutor in my head, "I used myself as a case study. Effects of solitude on the human person. One goes through phases. First of all, one feels liberated. The mind is refreshed and acute. The deliciousness of the solitary vices, the solitary virtues, are happily indulged in. Lust and philosophy, life and history as joyful, diminutive games, played on the blank wall of the mind. Everything incommunicable and private, everything endogenous and subjective, can be revelled in. At first these encounters with the bare self are unchallenging.
After a while though, usually late at night, one suddenly finds in oneself, arising unbidden, a curious, hateful dismay. One discovers it like one would discover a cavity in a back tooth, with a sort of disgust and shame, and at the same time, a morbid curiosity about the sources and progress of the decay. It comes at bedtime, as a strangely definite sense that one has left something undone. It is when one tries to pinpoint exactly what has been left undone, that one becomes puzzled. Why can't I happily sleep, fold etc. to bed? And then the whole, stark truth wells up at you. I haven't lived. I haven't lived today. Something, some opportunity or other, has somehow been missed, or rather, it never arose, and this not arising, this failure of phenomena to appear, this absence, is felt like a presence, like a ghost in the room which stands all night by your bed and prevents sleep.
Thursday 10 January 2013
A Pain
The old pain has returned. Diagnose this pain, seek its origin and course, and how it may be ended.
The pain rests like a glowing coal in the abdomen. It is very reminiscent of a toothache. It feels as though something is irredeemably rotten, and the festering heat from this decay is the
source of pain. It is also like a hard knot which cannot be digested, in the stomach.
What is the effect of this pain? Lack of ability to concentrate. On a book, a television, a computer, a task. Outward objects appear like symbols, like adjuncts and emissaries of the pain itself.
The pain prevents sleep. It glows through the night, sometimes in the day it suddenly prevents movement, and a stasis ensues, in which the current action appears meaningless, and in that space of questioning, action is arrested.
The effect is to leave the mind confused and disoriented, hearkening for an answer to an unanswerable question, an impossible grasping after facts.
The pain is intolerable, insistent, always making itself known and grasping outwards for an answer. The pain is also a need and more than a need, a question and more than a question.
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