Author: Lars Iyer

Serious drinking. Nothing frivolous here. A bottle of spirits. That we have to finish. It’s our duty to see where it leads. To see where it takes us.

Because there’s somewhere we have to be taken. We have to get out of ourselves. Our of our heads. Our heads are confining us. They’re turning us inwards. Whereas drink turns us outward …

 

A disastrous day! At least there’s drink. At least there’s some opening. At least we can open the door of the day. And leave it behind.

At least drinking brings us together.

 

We’ve left the day behind. Forget the day! Forget what happened! Don’t look back. We’re drinking into the evening. We’re drinking into the night. We have the future before us. The great darkness. The great night.

We’ll ruin ourselves for work tomorrow. We’ll wreck ourselves for intelligent thought in the morning. We’ll deliberate sabotage all our philosophical acumen. Who needs it: philosophical acumen? Where has it got us: philosophical acumen?

We destroy ourselves every night! We undo our work! We drink to attain the condition of thoughtlessness! Oblivion! Drinking isn’t drinking unless it leads to unconsciousness.

 

Dreaming of some magnificent bender of our lives. Some infinite bender, from which we’d never return. Some magnificent binge of drinking. Drinking from here to infinity. Beginning now and ending … when? Never ending! Never stopping!

There is no tomorrow. Let’s bury tomorrow. There’s only today. There’s only  the infinite: today. There’s only today, going on forever, lasting forever. There’s only eternity, this eternity. There’s only nowhere.

 

Are we drinking too much? There’s only drinking too much. That’s the only acceptable way of drinking.

 

Those Organisational Management fuckers. Do you think they know how to drink? They can do everything but drink. Because drinking’s not about what you can do. It doesn’t concern what you can do.

Drinking’s a giving up. A throwing in of the towel. An admission of defeat. You have to have been terribly defeated, if you’re going to drink.

How will you go into death? Who will sing to you? Who will show you the way out? Who will show you the way to go? Who will come to you, to help you cross over? Who will God send? What avatar?

Who will come from the other world? Who will welcome you into heaven?

 

Who will hold you as you go into death? Who will hold you in their arms and sing to you? Who will wipe your brow? Who will be with you as you slip away? Who will help you cross the threshold?

Destitute times, right? The world’s night, right? But what does this destitution let us see? Everything’s become dark. There’s no more meaning. Nothing … intelligible. I don’t know what role we’re supposed to play.

New day fucking rising, right? A new day? It’s the old day. It’s the same old day. There’s nothing new under the sun. And it’s the same old fucking sun, too. The same old fireball.

 

Today’s a new day. Time’s still going forward. There’s always more time. And don’t you want to scream: Too much time! Don’t you want to shout: No more! No more!

Disgust with time. The obscenity of time. The too-much of time. Why should there by more days? Why does everything have to begin again?

The effrontery of time. The insult of time. Mocking us! Laughing at us!

Disgust at the morning. Appalled by the morning. That there should be another morning. That one day should succeed another. That another day should come. And that another will come tomorrow.

No! We refuse tomorrow! We don’t want tomorrow. Today is enough. Yesterday was enough. What we did to ourselves yesterday. How we ruined ourselves yesterday. And now we have to begin all over again!

 

I’m tired of living like this. No: I’m tired of living. I’ve had enough of living. I’ve lived too fucking long. It’s been too fucking much.

I don’t want it to be like this. I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to be.

 

Damn everything in this entire universe. Damn you and damn me. Damn the sky. Damn the night. Damn every-fucking-thing.

Lobotomy – it’s the only answer. How do we apply to get a lobotomy? I don’t actually want my brain. What’s my brain ever done for me except get me into fucking trouble?

 

How are your, like, suicidal impulses?

The same.

Your suicidal ideation?

Is there any other kind?

These why questions. That just open everything up. These whys that are like the whys of the universe. That are like the universe itself asking why. Where the universe – everything – asks why it is, why it was, why it will be.

 

Why: that’s the universe’s why. We’re asking the universe’s why. We’re asking in place of the universe. We’re asking for everything that exists. On their behalf. We’re questioning the outrage of existence. The horror of having to exist.

Maybe things like existing. Look at those gulls. They’re happy, right?

They’re just wheeling. Just going round and round. They’re mechanisms. They’re machines. They’re just nature’s dumb circling.

It always amazes me how we’re not injured. Or dead. How something hasn’t happened to us. Some accident. That we’re not missing several limbs. That we’re not brain-damaged. That we don’t have terminal cancer.

Maybe we have.

We’re so, like, vulnerable, right? We’re so easily damaged. Easily destroyed. Anything could happen to us, and yet it doesn’t really. I mean, how come we haven’t been murdered? How come we don’t have maniac stalkers? Why isn’t there some serial killer pursuing us?

Maybe there is.

And the Earth’s vulnerable, too. Just rolling through space. Turning on its axis. Why hasn’t some massive meteor rushing in to strike it? Why has it survived for so long? Why does it still have an atmosphere? Why hasn’t it just blown away into space?

 

Why didn’t we die long, long ago? Of some childhood cancer?

I think we did. I’ve such a sense of having died. Such a sense of never actually having lived. For not a moment. Never having been born. Never actually begun … I think I died long ago. I think I’m a ghost.

There’s a darkness in the sun. There’s a black sun within the sun. That’s burning. There’s a sun devouring the sun. There’s a cancer of the sun, devouring the sun.

What’s wrong with us? How did self-loathing become a form of enjoyment? Like scorpions stinging themselves.

Nothing hates itself like a human being. We’re the uniquely fucked up species, right?

That’s what comes of having a big brain. Used for torturing itself. And why shouldn’t it? We’re so profoundly fucked up. So fucking deeply. And the smarter you are, the more fucked up you are.

Why can’t we just die? Why isn’t it just time to die? Why can’t the end just come? Why can’t it be here? I don’t want to say anything else. I don’t want to have to.

Why can’t the universe just admit that the game is up. Why can’t anyone but us see it?

Why can’t it just stop now? Isn’t this the perfect moment for it to stop? I wish I could click my fingers and destroy it all, like Thanos. What about all the poor people you’d kill.

Fuck the poor people I’d kill.

Right now. Right – now. [Clicking her fingers.] It’s not ending.

 

The enemy’s dead – don’t forget that. Already dead.

So why’s the enemy, like, attacking us from every direction?

The enemy is death – all the forces of the dead. That are alive in their death. The enemy is death come alive. All the negative forces come alive.

We can’t defeat death, can we?

We need death to finally die.

We need to finally die.

 

*One day, death will die by itself. One day, the enemy won’t be there anymore. Death will be dead again. And this world … will be liberated.

The good people will win. We’re the good people. And goodness will win. We know what that is, even if we think we don’t.

No more fear. We won’t live in fear, not anymore.

So how will we live?

In love, of course. We’ll live in love. And in faith. And in hope.