Texting Cicero.
We need her help. We need to be told what to do.
Cicero, our erstwhile organ grinder! Cicero, the old head of the philosophy dept! Cicero, who handpicked us – us – to work here!
Cicero, who plucked us – us – from our provincial universities. Cicero, who summoned us here. Cicero, who scouted the conferences for … what? Not the up and coming, we were never that …
The desperate! The put-upon! The cornered!
Yes, Cicero, who sought us out: the prospectless! The defeated – spiritually! Financially! The lower class! The bordering-on-resentful! The all-but-embittered! The skint! The pretty-much-down-and-out! Who’d never normally be given a lectureship at a Russell Group university!
Cicero, who had some kind of faith in us – no doubt entirely misplaced! Cicero, who was apparently deluded. Cicero, who brought us north to her adopted city.
Did she see signs of brilliance in us? we wonder. Might we be brilliant after all? Brilliant in our stupidity. Brilliant in our mediocrity … Perhaps we’re brilliant inside. Very deeply inside. So deeply we don’t know about it. So deeply we show no signs of it, and never will …
Face it: Sis actually wanted idiots around her. She didn’t want to feel threatened … She wanted a background to allow her brilliance to shine yet brighter. For contrast, like. It was a chiaroscuro thing.
Cicero knew who we were, we agree. What we were for. Cicero understood our role, our apocalyptic role. Part of the end times will be a parade of deformities and grotesques. Not physical, but mental deformity. There’ll be mental sports! Twistings! Human contortionists! Like in that Hieronymous Bosch painting, but in thought … That's who we are: the cerebral freak show. Obscurants! Hermeticists! Conspiracy theorists!
Anyway, Cicero fought all kinds of dreadful administrative battles to keep the department open, we agree. Indeed, she risked her sanity to open it in the first place. She went to the most gruelling meetings. The most trying meetings. Which is where, in fact, she developed some of her most crucial thoughts, as, she said, the dialectical opposite to said meetings.
Her stuff about the theogenic process. About blind increate formlessness. About the aboriginal nonground. About banished fundamentals. Were it for her gruelling meetings, she would never have come up with them: that's what she said.
And she brought us on! Encouraged us!
I wouldn’t say that, exactly, Ava says. She was pretty insulting.
But it was a kind insulting, Magellan says. It was meant to spur us on.
It was meant to crush us, Hans says.
Yes, but she knew we could rise from our ashes, Magellan says.
I’m still crushed, Hans says.
Don’t be so fragile, Magellan says. It was a bootcamp of sorts. She wanted to toughen us up. Particular you, Gan. She could tell you were a soy boy.
She used to call us shitlibs! Ava says.
Only to wind us up, Magellan says. To defend our default academic leftism. To sharpen it into a weapon.
She said all the energy of the counterculture was on the right, Hans says. That the left were statist tossers.
But it was in service to the left, Magellan says. To the leftist revolution!
Don’t bet on it! Hans says. Cicero was a provocateur. Do you remember her MAGA cap?
Cicero always saw herself as a principle of negativity, it’s true, Magellan says. As the freedom of the negative.
Isn’t that what she called her band? I ask.
Oh I forgot all about her band, Hans says.
Cicero’s led many lives, Magellan says.
She’s living death now, I say. Her drinking …
Anyway, Magellan, we’ve all ridden the rollercoaster of Cicero’s enthusiasms …, Ava says
… And despairs …, Hans says.
We’ve all been up and down with Cicero …, Ava says.
… Mostly down …, Hans says.
But the highs make it worth it …, Magellan says, In the end, we’re Cicero’s army. Cicero’s ragtag. Cicero’s band of … what?
Idiots, of course! We agree. Holy fools!
Cicero’s texted, I say. She’s inviting us to the coast.
Work in Progress 