A Sort of Dying

We didn’t want clarity – the bright light of analytic clarity. We didn’t want to understand what we read.

To plunge into continental obscurity: that’s what we wanted.

Senselessness! We loved senselessness! We loved sentences that we could not understand. That needed decryption. That needed code breakers.

We wanted to bathe in prose – in obscure philosophical prose. We wanted to dwell in philosophy. Wanted the waters of European philosophy to close over our heads. To wash over our heads. To wash our poor heads away.


To think with the thoughts of others. No – with their unthoughts. With their sort-of-like-thoughts. With their obscurities. With the things we do not understand.

We want the unground. We want the groundless. Forget clarity! Forget logical rigour! Forget precision!

We want the obscure. We want the unreadable. We want to read pages where we lose the thread. And our thread. And ourselves. Our very sense of ourselves!


Reading isn’t about lucidity! It’s an escape from lucidity.

We don’t want to understand a line – not a line. We’re tired of understanding. Tired of clarity! We want the darkness to close over us. Want to be broken up. Broken away. How tired we are of being ourselves!

We want to sink. We want to go down. We want to plunge. We want to drown. In obscurity. In darkness.


The great churn of … incomprehensibility. Not a single intelligible sentence. Not a single phrase we could parse. Might as well have been written in a foreign language. And a very foreign language. A language that had nothing to do with us.


We want books that keep the secret – that keep their secret. That turn away from us.

Unsociable books. Forbidding books. Books like landscapes, like skies. Like the breast of the earth.


Books of the earth. Books of black earth. Of the darkest terroirs!

Books turned away from us. Unreadable books. Books that flee reading. That belong to the dark, and press into the dark.


Let’s never read again. Let’s forget what reading was.

Intelligibility? Fuck that. Arguments? What are those? Clarity. Forget clarity! Forget the clear. Forget the light. Forget reason. Forget the rational. Forget it all.


Books that are all question, that are nothing but question.

We want enigmas. We want paths that trail off into the darkness. Paths that lead nowhere. Paths that don’t even begin. Non paths!


Let the darkness thicken. Let the darkness choke us. Let it thicken in our heads.

The darkness, slurring. Darkness’s words. That do not signify. That do not mean. That are heavy, that’s all. That sink, in their heaviness. And pull us down with them.

Earth-words. Words of matter. Sludge-words, thick and heavy.

We’re wading through sludge. Wading through mire.

We understand less than we ever did. We know less than we’ve ever known. We aren’t ourselves and we aren’t anyone. And it’s a relief. It’s pressure – off.


Sinking, with the words. Sinking, into non meaning. Into the abyss of non meaning. Words that carry us down with them. Ballast words. Rubble words. Anchor words. That sink us down into nothing.


Are we drowning? How can you drown in words? How can you be choked by words?

We’re pulled down. We’re dragged down. We’re sinking – and it’s a relief to sink.

Dying – are we dying? A sort of dying.

We want to be released. We want to be let go. We’ve had enough. Enough of everything! Enough of the world! Enough of living in the world! Enough of living! Enough of enough!

Let’s lie down. Lie down, and be done to. Lie down and be crushed. Lie down and be overwhelmed.

Linguistic hell. Idiot books, but deep idiocy. Enfolding idiocy.