Skylight Dialogues

Tell me something that happened to you when you were young, I say. Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else.

When I was young … I lived an ordinary life, Priya says. I did ordinary things. I had ordinary happinesses and, God knows, ordinary sadnesses. Which is to say: nothing happened. Nothing extraordinary, anyway.

I wasn’t talking about anything extraordinary, I say.

Of course you were, Priya says. I’ll bet you’ve always been determined to be extraordinary. Which means you’ll always run up against my ordinariness. Because I am ordinary. Just as I’m mundane. Are you disappointed?

No, I say. Because I don’t believe you. You’re the most philosophical organisational manager who’s ever lived.

Is there much competition? Priya asks.

These are the skylight dialogues, I say. A erotic merger between organisational management and philosophy. In bed.

Anyway, tell me about yourself when you were young, Priya says. Tell me something you’ve never told anyone.

It’s simple: I used to want to write a perfect book, and then kill myself, I say.

Is that it? Priya asks.

The work, I called it, I say. Everything was about the work. I used write night and day. Or edit. It was mostly about editing.

And what was it about, the work? Priya asks.

I never knew, I say. It was supposed to be some absolute statement. To be an absolute book, totally incomparable. Like Lautreamont’s Maldoror, if you know that.

I don’t know anything about Lotry-what-not’s anything, Priya says.

It was supposed to say everything through a kind of inversion. By saying the opposite. I saw it as a Gnostic treatise.

And did you ever finish it? Priya asks.

I’m still trying to write it now, I say.

So you can kill yourself after? Priya says. How melodramatic.

It was cheating, because I knew I’d never finish, I say. And that I’d never write anything perfect. Or that was even any good.