There’s something Mother wants to learn. There’s a message Mother wants to draw from us.
Mother wants to read the Book of Idiocy. She wants to restage it. To replay it – to replay us. The whole Philosophy-in-Organisational-Management fiasco.
Mother’s idiocy-mining. Mother’s looking to discover the secret of our idiocy. Mother wants to drill down into our idiocy. Mother wants her own katabasis. She wants to descend into our profounds.
When we want to lay our burden down, that’s when we really take up our burden. When our strength is exhausted, that’s when we have to show our strength. When we’re on our knees, that’s when we have to walk. When we’ve exhausted our mission – all missions – that’s when our mission begins. When we reach the state of perfect uselessness – that’s when we discover our use.
When we’re finished, that’s when we begin. When we’re at our wit’s end, that’s when we’ll find our wits. At the end of the longest night, that’s when we’ll find our morning. At the end of our deepest bender, that’s where we’ll find our sobriety. When we’ve died, utterly died to the world, that’s when we’ll find the world, and our life in the world. When there’s not a thought in our heads, that’s when we’ll begin to think; when we’ll have our first thoughts.
Our rat’s maze. Our rat’s nest. Our lair of stupidity.
Our rhythms. Our roundelay. The round and round of our banter. The eternal return of our having nothing to say.
We object! We object to everything. We raise our voices – cry out! Shout out!
We shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t exist. We shouldn’t be – and who made us be? Whose fault is this? Why should we be?
Thrashing at the end of the line. Thrashing – and that’s our life, that’s thrashing. That’s who we are, that thrashing.
We’ve been caught in a trap. And we cry out because we’ve been caught in a trap. And the trap is life. And the trap is our lives. And the trap is time. Our lives, our time.
We sound it out – sound out the alarm. Which is really our alarm. Which is really the alarm of us.
We’re crying out, like car alarms. We’re thumping into the night. We’re screaming like banshees. A screaming in everything we say. Everything we do.
This is potential. Things separate from their uses.
They’re hardly things.
Things becoming unnameable. Becoming too heavy for names …
Things, refusing their names and refusing to be things.
We’re where it’s most wrong, the wrongness.
Where Livia brought us. Where Livia placed us, knowing what would happen.
Something’s wrong. Our very lives are wrong. Our very hearts are wrong. Our laughter – even our laughter is wrong.
Something’s wrong. And we’re the Most Wrong. We’re the place where wrongness knows itself. Where the wrongness is most deeply concentrated.
Livia knew we were Wrong, capital W. She knew it was a state of being, our Wrongness. And she knew that she had to deepen our Wrongness. To make it worse. And to bring us into awareness of our Wrongness. To awaken us – really awaken us – to our Wrongness.
To make Wrongness reflect on itself. Know itself. See itself in the mirror. That’s what she wanted?
And then what?
And then Wrongness would speak. The Wrong would speak, and in our inverted world, it would become the Right. It would become Rightness. The Wrong would invert itself and become the Right. The Low would inverted and become the High – and even the Most High. Wasn’t that Livia’s mission?
She was casting out demons. She was casting us out. She was casting me out. Because I’m a demon. Because I’m wrong – all of me is wrong. And I thrash about in wrongness. I scream in wrongness. I devour myself in wrongness. And all I want is to be released. I want the weight lifted – my own weight. I want the stone lifted – my own stone. The stone of my life.
Who did this to us? Who made us? What are we for?
We’re for nothing. We were born to be destroyed. We’re offerings, that’s all. But offerings to what? What purpose are we meant to serve?
The opposite of purpose. The mockery of purpose. But that’s the point.
Who did this to us?
Livia did it. Livia made it happen.
Livia was the author – our author. Livia made us happen – like this. Brought us together. Assembled us. Formed our collective. Gave us our names, our new names.
Who made us? What demon? What mocker? What hater? What monster?
Who made us like this? Who stretched us between heaven and hell?
Who made us capable of asking who made us?
Who did this to us?
Livia. Livia did it.
On purpose?
She knew, in her own way, what she served.
The devil?
God, in her own way. The divine plan, in her own way. Her demonism was her divinity. Her hatred was love.
That’s the sort of thing she’d say.
Livia Knew. She had an instinct. She assembled us. Like a team of superheroes.
Livia’s plan. Livia’s scheme. Livia’s machinations.
Livia served God. Livia was divine, not demonic. Or even in her demonism, she served God. Nothing happens without God wanting it. Not the slightest thing.
We’re like the Fuhrer in the Fuhrer bunker. We’re in denial! More crazed than ever! More wild in our plans!
This is our deathbed, practically. These are our last words, pretty much. Our last will and testament. What will sum up our time on earth.
Halfway through our lives! Halfway through our three years and ten! Lost in a dark wood, or whatever it is Dante said. Sitting in a huddle, like Scientist, Writer and Stalker in Tarkovsky’s film?
Haven’t we been busy destroying ourselves just as soon as we could? Haven’t we been trying to drink ourselves to death from the moment it was legal?
Death drinkers. Alcoholics of Thanatos. Journeying to the end of our own night. Drinking as we wait for the nightmare to end.
Oh all to end! No more, no more!
How many more variations on our stupidity can there be? It’s intolerable. It’s an offence – an offence to God. To anyone who listens.
Our drivel. Our polluted stream. Our Gnosticism – is that it? Is that the name for it?
We’ve already committed suicide. We killed ourselves long ago.
We were suicides from the start, pretty much. We’ve already scuttled ourselves, we’re already sinking. Our lives have been nothing but a capsizing. We’re going down, postgraduates! We’ve always been going down!
Our life sentence! Our death sentence!
It’s, like, Nestor’s exhibition. Nestor’s art.
But there are no titles. No plaques. Nothing to explain it.
That’s part of it: that there’s nothing to explain it.
A ruin exhibition. Showing the patina of time. The patina of decay.
That’s part of the art: you can’t even tell whether it is art.
They’ve won, the Organisational Managers. They’ve won and we’ve lost! But they’ve let us have the ruins for a night. They’ve let us wander through their ruins.
It’s as if they’d forgotten we were here. But they know full well we’re here. Do you think they’d overlooked these ruins?
They’re here for a reason. Just as we’re here for a reason.
The bulldozers are probably coming tomorrow. The cranes going up. It’ll all be fenced off, properly. With security guards to keep us out.
But tonight … tonight … it’s open to us. Gloriously open. Welcomingly open.
Could it be some kind of trap?
They’ve already trapped us. We’re already trapped. They’re letting us in – why?
They’re letting the ruins be ruins. Letting them stand open. Letting them breathe – but why?
Why do they want to allow us into the ruins? What are they trying to achieve? What are they going for? What is their purpose? What are they about? Is it because they want to watch us? To see what we’ll do?
And what will we do?
Is it a yin yang thing? A left hand of darkness thing?
We’ve had enough. Beam us up. Our mission is complete. We’ve served our time.
Don’t you see?: our mission is what begins after our mission is complete. We serve time by having already served time.
We’ve been here too long. We’ve died too many times. But that’s the point. We’ve survived our death – we’re posthumous; but that’s exactly how it should be.
Why isn’t there someone to say, time’s up? To say, time’s over. To say, time people please. But the point: we’re supposed to be in the aftermath; the aftertime. We live on in a time when everything should have come to an end.
Posthumous lives: that’s what we live. Posthumous time: that’s our time.
Work in Progress 