And it was Cicero who saw this. Cicero, who chose us.
Eternal gratitude to Cicero, right? Who never sought to hire Oxford and Cambridge types. Who never looked for high flyers. As she told us! She didn’t want fly-by-nighters. Who’d get their job at Newcastle and plan escape. Who’d be thinking constantly of their next job. About where else they’d go.
She chose those with no prospects. Who’d stay put. Who were grateful to have a job. Who wouldn’t think to fly the coop. Who’d be there forever. Year after year! Who were Dependable. Who’d Deliver what she wanted.
Cicero admired our dedication. She used to probe us about it. What did we think we were doing? Who did we take ourselves to be? What were we writing – and why? She wanted to understand. She wanted to play the anthropologist.
She was interested – never dismissive. She wanted to see what we were doing from our perspective. As she sipped her Diet coke.
Was she laughing at us? Perhaps a little. Was she taking the piss? Oh, that was there, too. But what was the world like through our eyes? To write our curio-papers? To follow our interest in odd things? In neglected things?
We went looking in figurative dusty corners. In philosophical attics and basements. For out of the way things. For packed away and forgotten things.
We wanted to set up camp somewhere. To find a corner all of our own. A little play pen. Where we could be undisturbed. Where we could busy ourselves quietly. Away from the clamour! Whilst the rest of the world did what it did.
Ours was almost a wilful obscurity. A desired failure. We were almost ostentatiously useless. We wanted to find the key to understanding the present world in old theologies. In forgotten scholastic debates.
This was our excuse for not living normal lives. For not choosing the normal things. This was the reason we gave for keeping ourselves sequestered. For hiding out half our lives. For taking shelter, always. For keeping to our books. For reading, for writing. For turning from the world and the affairs of the world.
This was the reason why we always wanted time. Wanted peace! And silence! And to be left alone. Ignored.
Why did we want this? What was wrong with us? Was this how we were going to live our lives – really? Was this what we’re going to do with our lives? Was this our answer: To retreat? To hide away? Of course it was …
To act as if we have a vocation. As if we were being led. As if there were somewhere we were Going. As if there was a Destination. And as if we were really, really good at this.
As if we were in in possession of some Clue. As if we knew what other people didn’t. As if the lives other peoples lived couldn’t be for us.
Why were we so intolerant of others? Why had we always sought our own path? Why had we always separated ourselves? Why had we wanted our own solitude?
Why did we want to close our office doors – to work? To be bent over our desks. Hunched over our laptops? Our notebooks?
Why did we want to open this book or that one? As if our lives depended on it! As if it mattered! Why did we want to contemplate this problem?
Wasn’t life enough? Weren’t ordinary things enough? Weren’t ordinary satisfactions enough? Why had we let ourselves be steered in this direction?
Why had we never been put off by our stupidity? Why, in the end, hadn’t it held us back?
Why did we take these thinkers as our heroes and heroines? How did they become our exemplars?
Why were these books important? Why did we think we’d discover the secret of life in these pages?
What were we looking for that we couldn’t find in the world? What further satisfaction did we seek?
What kind of instinct was this? For something higher? Better? Greater? What were we looking for?
Why did we want farther and farther horizons? Why did we want to do what we could not do?
We wanted to learn how to Seek. We wanted to be taught – how to look for it: the secret. As though we were made for nothing else.
As though we were looking for the Good. For the True. For the Beautiful. As though there were such things as the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. As though they were only names for the same distant, impossible thing: the Good, the True and the Beautiful.
All of this was our version of a prayer. All of it, a way of saying that we didn’t want to be what we were. All of it, a way of saying that the world needed to be redeemed. Needed salvation. That there was evil – terrible evil. That we must turn from this wicked world. That we must hate it. And must strike back from our hatred.
All this was a way of saying that this was not how the world should be. That the Good is missing from it, the world. And the True! And the Beautiful! That we must hold ourselves back from the world. That we shouldn’t give into it. That we shouldn’t yield to the Evil. That we must seek the Good in our own way. In a stupid way!
That this was not God’s world. That Satan was real. That the Antichrist was real. That the Devastation was real. The Abomination was abroad. That the Natural Order is to be despised. That Nature is to be despised.
That the poison was everywhere. That it fell with the rain, and dripped from the trees. That it ran in the rivers and swam in the lakes. That it was there in the fields, in the woods, on the sand of the beaches.
As though we were no lost, after all. As though the world wasn’t poisoned, and we weren’t poisoned and evil didn’t cry out inside us.
This world was not enough, and we’d gone looking for help. And we didn’t know where we were going. And we didn’t know what were doing. And we were lost- quite lost – in the world. But the world wasn’t all there was.
Our infinite philosophical eros. Our undefeatable Desire. For Cicero, it was Gnostic. She knew us as Gnostic. She saw the signs in us.
The world as a prison: we knew that, just as she did Cicero. Cicero was certain of it, and so must we be.
Gnostic Saints: that what we were, to Cicero. That’s what Cicero wanted us to be. Gnostic Saints? Saint Doom and Saint Horrified and Saint Murdered and Saint Horrified?
Work in Progress 