Author: Lars Iyer

My flat.

You’re drunk, Priya says.

I am drunk, I say.

So this is drunken you, Priya says. I don’t think I like drunken you.

Have a drink, I say. Catch up.

I don’t want to drink, Priya says. I don’t like seeing you like this.

Like what? I ask. It’s okay. Join me. Come on, you’re staying the night. Follow me down the drain.

You are my drain, Priya says.

So come on down, I say. Flush yourself down.

Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Priya asks. Am I supposed to patch you up, take care of you, like some tragic fucking artist?

You’re not supposed to do anything, I say.

I’m doing this to you, aren’t I? Priya says. Driving you to drink. I mean why are you drinking today, when I was coming to stay?

Because, because, because, I say.

I shouldn’t get in your way, Priya says. I should just leave you here for you to drink on your own.

Don’t go, I say.

Why not? Priya asks. Why shouldn’t I go?

Because you’re so – fucking – hot, I say. Because you transfigure the world – my world.

Aren’t I part of the natural world? Priya asks. Aren’t I part of the honey trap?

I’m tired of burning out my eyes, writing, I say. I want to look at something … beautiful. And here you are.

You’re so weak, Priya says. You’re a weak man. I despise weak men.

I’m very glad that you’re here, I say. You’re proof that … it doesn’t all suck. The problem is … The problem is … everything. The problem is life. The problem is existence. The problem is time. The fact that there’s more of it. That it never stops.

The problem is the great mechanism’s at work, I say. Pumping on. Making more of the same. More of the more.

The problem is the tedium, I say. It’s the boredom of existence. I hate it. I hate it all.

Yet you don’t hate me, imagine, Priya says. Why is that? You hate everyone but me. There must be something very special about me. To escape your hatred. Your scorn.

My hatred for all things is a sign of my … capacity to love, I say. It’s the inverse of a love – a great love. See, I love the world, too. I love it more than anything. The real world – not this fakery. Not this stage set. Not this scenery … And I love you.

Don’t just say things, Priya says.

I just told you –, I say.

You told me nothing, Priya says. The other day, I was part of nature’s honey trap, or whatever. And today –

Today is today, and full of love, I say. And full of God! Hallelujah!

God was drunk when he made us, I say. He’s drunk as he loves us. And we’re drunk when we turn to him. When we pray. Drunken prayers are the only ones God hears. When we bow our drunken heads. When we speak our drunken prayers. When we slur our drunken words.

God is waiting for us … on the other side, I say. And drinking is the way to go to him. Which is why God wants us to drink. Which is why God wants me to drink more and more.

Let’s dance, I say. Let’s drunk dance. Let’s dance ourselves to death, or drink ourselves to death, or whatever.

Don’t – touch – me, Priya says. You haven’t earnt the right. And you know, drinking like this has been done. It’s very mid twentieth century, alcoholism. No one’s into that anymore. People are more sensible.

I hate sensible, I say.

Alcoholism’s so boring, Priya says. It’s such a cliché. You hate clichés too, don’t you?

But I’m not actually an alcoholic, I say. I’m not even an alcoholic. I’m not even anything. This is just an … afternoon thing. It’s an afternoon melancholy thing. Don’t you ever feel afternoon melancholy? When you started the day with such hopes, such dreams. When you set out to write the best things you could, and then …

Then what? Priya says.

Then you run aground …, I say. Inevitably …

You thrive on this, Priya says. On failure. On nihilism. This is what you’re like.

Do not entrust yourself to failure, I quote. That only makes you nostalgic for success.

You should write about wanting to write a magnum opus, that’s what I think, Priya says. About the impossibility of your writing a magnum opus. That might be more interesting than trying to actually write a magnum opus and failing.

Write about what you can’t do, Priya says. Write about how mediocre you feel. Write about how you disappoint yourself. Write about afternoon melancholy …

My bedroom.

In bed.

Tell me something that happened to you when you were young, I say. Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else.

When I was young … I lived an ordinary life, Priya says. I did ordinary things. I had ordinary happinesses and, God knows, ordinary sadnesses. Which is to say: nothing happened. Nothing extraordinary, anyway.

I wasn’t talking about anything extraordinary, I say.

Of course you were, Priya says. I’ll bet you’ve always been determined to be extraordinary. Which means you’ll always run up against my ordinariness. Because I am ordinary. Just as I’m mundane. Are you disappointed?

No, I say. Because I don’t believe you. You’re the most philosophical organisational manager who’s ever lived.

Do you ever think that I might say something profound, just by chance? Priya asks.  That would surprise you, wouldn’t it? Out of the mouth of the organisational manager, eh, philosopher? Out of my humble organisational manager’s mouth … It might speak through me, whatever it is …

What’s ‘it’, anyway? I ask.

That’s the question, Priya says. That’s the mystery … All the things we talk about. All the questions we ask … No one’s going to answer, are they? No one’s interested.

Maybe they aren’t questions, but prayers, I say. Maybe they’re ways of praying.

To who? Priya asks. To what?

God, maybe, I say. The sky, maybe. The light, maybe.

I’ll miss our talks, Priya says. I’ll miss talking like this.

It isn’t over yet, I say.

It is though, really, Priya says. It was always over. It’s like we’ve outlived ourselves. We’re already dead. It’s like we’ve been dead for the longest time. We’re just waiting for death to catch up with us.

Death has other things to do, I think, I say. Death’s fucking busy …

God, what do we add up to, we two? Priya says. What do we add to the universe? Sharing our nothings. Our… insignificances. Contemplating the nothingness of the day and our nothingness and our obscurity and the fact that Earth's just falling through space forever.

These are the skylight dialogues, I say. A erotic merger between organisational management and philosophy.

It feels like philosophy’s winning, Priya says.

Like I said, you’re the least organisational organisational manager who’s ever lived, I say. And the least managerial.

Does that make me a philosopher? Priya asks.

Maybe it makes you a poet, I say.

I'll say something poetic, Priya says. It feels like the day’s fallen out of step with itself. That there are these strange lakes of time … Pools of time, just lying there … Reflecting the sky. It feels like we’re in some … split off universe. Some ox-bow lake universe that’s broken from the river of the real one. From the real flow of history. This is where time’s got lost. Where everything’s forgetting itself, and so are we.

Wow, I say. Just wow.

Silence.

Now you have to tell me about yourself when you were young, Priya says. Tell me something you’ve never told anyone.

It’s simple: I used to want to write a perfect book, and then kill myself, I say.

Is that it? Priya asks.

The work, I called it, I say. Everything was about the work. I used write night and day. Or edit. It was mostly about editing.

And what was it about, the work? Priya asks.

It was supposed to be some absolute statement, I say. To be an absolute book, totally incomparable. Like Lautreamont’s Maldoror, if you know that.

I don’t know anything about Lotry-what-not’s anything, Priya says.

It was supposed to say everything through a kind of inversion, I say. By saying the opposite. I saw it as a Gnostic treatise. As an expression of the Gnostic imaginary.

And did you ever finish it? Priya asks.

I’m still trying to write it now, I say.

So you can kill yourself after? Priya says. How melodramatic.

It was cheating, because I knew I’d never finish, I say. And that I’d never write anything perfect. Or that was even any good.

Longsands, Tynemouth.

It’s so foggy, Priya says. Where’s, like, the sea?  

Out there somewhere, I say. I can hear the waves, crashing.

It all feels so unreal, Priya says. So … slowed down. It’s like nothing’s in focus. It’s all so muffled and echoey … What are you supposed to do on days like this?

Gaze into the nothingness, I say.

Is that what it is: nothingness? Priya asks. Then you should know all about it. This should be your specialism: nothingness.

Silence. Walking in the sand.

We’re always at a remove from everything, aren’t we? Priya says. We’re always stepping out of the moment and looking down at it. Or looking up at it. Or looking sideways at it. But we’re never in it, are we? Or perhaps you are. But I’m not. Don’t get me wrong – I like being here with you. I like our erotic afternoons, but we’re so meta- … Talking about this stuff. Instead of … whatever …

Talking’s part of it, I say.

We’re always talking, Priya says. And never deciding anything. Never concluding. Where does all this talk lead? Where does it take us? Nowhere. The same place as we were before.

But everything’s a little bit different, I say.

No, everything’s even more the same …, Priya says. All this talking, and we never get to the point.

What point? I say. There is no point.

There’s something important to be said, I’m sure of it, Priya says. Something that wants to be said … Something that could overturn the world. 

Tell me something, then, I say. Say it. Let it speak.

It's not about me speaking, Priya says. Everyting I say just gets in the way.

Just say things, I say. Let it intervene, or whatver.  Tell a story about your past. About your girlhood.

I don’t want to tell … stories …, Priya says. I want to talk about what stories are about. I want to get behind the stories. I want to talk, without saying anything. I want to leave words just … hanging in the air. Just … vibrating  in the fog. God. I’m turning into a philosopher … Turns out philosophy’s infectious. Turns out I can play philosopher.

Listen to me … listen to me talking, Priya says. How come I can talk like this? How did I get to talk like this? It’s like … I’ve swapped places with the air. Like the air’s speaking. Like the fog is speaking. Like the day’s speaking. Like this is the speech of the afternoon.

Do I sound pretentious? Priya asks. I’ll bet I do. Desperately pretentious … Insufferably pretentious …

Priya, picking a book from the shelf. Reading: Who, if I cried out, who would hear me among the angelic orders? Poems about angels. Do you believe in angels, philosopher?

Fallen angels, maybe, I say. And the Nephilim, who were the offspring of fallen angels and human women.

I don’t care about Nephilim, Priya says. Rainer Maria Rilke: I’ve heard of him, I know the name; don’t think I’m totally ignorant. The Dunio Elegies. Is the kind of thing you read – really? … It’s like intruding on something, opening these pages. On some old European dream … What’s wrong with us? Why can’t we be reached by this stuff? Why aren’t we touched by this?

Speak for yourself, I say.

This just zooms over your head, too, Priya says. Don’t pretend. This doesn’t mean anything to you either. Except as some talisman. As something to worship from afar. When Rilke wants to open us … to God, or whatever. To the sky, or whatever. To death, or whatever. All those things. All those things our great-great-grandparents might have understood …

Once upon a time … once people would have set themselves to learn it by heart, Priya says. To be able to quote this. To remember it all, line by line …

All your books, philosopher … These old books, Priya says. They’re from a different time and about a different time, only you haven’t understood that yet … They’re outdated … they’ve been left behind. Haven’t you realised that yet?

You know what I think about your book-filled bedroom? Priya asks. About your life up here? You’re playing at being a philosopher and I’m playing at having an affair with a philosopher. You’re following your blind alley, as I’m no doubt following mine.

What’s your blind alley? I ask.

Romance, maybe, Priya says. This romance … Which will only last for a while – that’s what I tell myself. It will last for a while and burn itself out, and then you’ll forget me, and I’ll forget you, and that’s how it should be.

And you’ll still be with hubbie? I ask.

That is my fate, I’m sure, Priya says. I’ll be with him forever … It’ll just go on and on …

One day, a long time from now,  you’ll tell your husband all about our affair, I say. One day, when you’re feeling particularly close. On your fiftieth wedding anniversary, or something. On his birthday, or yours … You’ll tell him about your love affair – that’s what you’ll call it. About reading Rilke with your philosopher lover. Reading Rilke in bed, the pair of us! The Dunio Elegies! High modernist stuff about angels!

That’ll teach him not to take you for granted, I say. To show him that you could have lead an entirely different life had you chosen to. That would add an unexpected twist to your anniversary dinner, wouldn’t it? That would make him sit up and listen …

You know, if you met someone else, I’d be terribly jealous, Priya says. Which makes me think you should be more jealous of my husband than you are. Unbearably so. Tormentedly so.

I am jealous, I say.

Don’t feign, Priya says. I know when you’re lying. See, I’d like to matter. Like everyone wants to matter. I want to be someone for whom someone else would live or die.

Your husband, I say.

Maybe him, though probably not, Priya says. Okay – I want you to want me. Desperately. Seriously.

You said we were just going to burn ourselves out …,  I say.

But that could be fun, right? Priya says. That could be fiery.

I do want you, anyway, I say.

I want you to want me more, Priya says. Not to be able to go on without me.

You’re actually married, I say. Which makes you very greedy.

Well maybe I don’t want to be married to him, Priya says. Maybe I’d leave him for you. If it wasn’t for … your work. Your life or death work which comes between you and me.

See, you think you’re exceptional …, Priya says. That you’re better than the rest of us … to stay up here in your eerie and write your stuff … You and your philosophical muse.

Maybe you’re my muse, I say. My new muse.

Maybe you’ll have to court me – properly, Priya. You have to make some effort. Everything just comes to you. I just drive out here.

I’ll write you a love letter, I say. I’ll send it right to your door. Rilke wrote a lot of love letters, you know. He wandered round Europe writing to various women.

It’s easy to love people when they’re absent, right? Priya says. You can imagine me exactly as you like. A philosophical me. A profound me. Who could join you in revering these old books. Rainer Maria Rilke, or whoever …

Whitley Sands.

Walking up the beach.

Are you worried you’ll be seen? I ask.

Maybe I’d like to be seen, Priya says. With my … young … lover.

What about your couple friends: what if they saw you? I ask.

Fuck my couple friends, Priya says. God, they’re to blame for a million dull evenings. I’ve done my time …

Walking.

It’s like there’s some absolute divide between us and everyone else, Priya says. Because we’re in lurrve. We’re, like, a loving elite. Who feel their love more intensely than anyone else. Who live more intensely. I mean, love … makes you feel exalted, doesn’t it? It makes you high. You feel like some secret aristocrat who knows the secret of everything …

Lovers are always in love with themselves – that’s the thing, I say. With their love. With their being in love. It’s a recipe for smugness.

You always have to be a downer on everything, Priya says.

Nature’s thrown us a treat and we’re supposed to be grateful, I say. To moon over one another in gratitude. When really it’s part of the whole machine.

What machine? Priya asks.

The natural machine, I say. The machine of nature. Romance is  nature’s honey trap. That’s what it’s called isn’t it: when they lure you in via someone pretty? Some hottie specifically sent out to target you? … See, nature wants us trapped. Confined. Seeking all our salvation from romantic love …

So where should we seek it? Priya asks.

In being against nature, I say. In not just being grateful for what we’re given. I mean, we think romance is an exception. That we’ve been given all this as a special gift. All these feelings … This elation … This craving … It’s all it’s supposed to be. That’s the very sane madness of lovers. Our rational irrationality. Our law-abiding prohibition. To which we totally succumb …

But it is an exception, Priya says. It’s like a reprieve. It’s like we’ve been let off from ordinary life. The usual rules don’t apply, right? We’ve got an exemption. A pass …

Sure, it’s like a reprieve, I say. It’s like we’re exempt.

God, you’re so meta, Priya says. You can’t just experience stuff. You can’t just give yourself over to things.

Can you? I ask.

This is our … secret kingdom, Priya says. The secret just between the two of us. That no one will know but us. How we are together. How we talk to each other. Tease each other. Our … gestures, or whatever. The way we fuck, even … Something … new has come into the world. Don’t you feel that?

It doesn’t matter what we feel, I say.

Look around you, Priya says. The sky’s doing its sky thing, the sea’s doing its sea thing. And we’re supposed to be doing our lovers on the beach thing. Just being happy, or whatever. And instead, we have to be meta. Have to talk about life instead of living it. We have to ask our questions.

It just means we’re conscious, I say. We’re awake.

It means we’re detached and in denial, Priya says.

I just want us not subject to everything – to, like, every passing feeling, I say. Even love. Even infatuation. You know what lovers are like. Aren’t we lucky? they think to ourselves. Why can’t everyone be as lucky as us? And then they become, like, love-evangelists. Trying to pair up their friends, or whatever. Telling everyone the story of their romance. How they got together. About how the world relented. When the remorseless logic of it all pulled back for a few moments. When they were granted an apparent reprieve.

Maybe it’s natural for think we’ can be against nature, Priya says. Maybe that’s human hubris.

What we are is a capacity to negate nature, I say. To say no. 

I haven't heard any nos from you lately, Priya says. Anyway, I think our whole thing's a no to the world. 

Tell me something that happened to you when you were young, I say. Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else.

When I was young … I lived an ordinary life, Priya says. I did ordinary things. I had ordinary happinesses and, God knows, ordinary sadnesses. Which is to say: nothing happened. Nothing extraordinary, anyway.

I wasn’t talking about anything extraordinary, I say.

Of course you were, Priya says. I’ll bet you’ve always been determined to be extraordinary. Which means you’ll always run up against my ordinariness. Because I am ordinary. Just as I’m mundane. Are you disappointed?

No, I say. Because I don’t believe you. You’re the most philosophical organisational manager who’s ever lived.

Is there much competition? Priya asks.

These are the skylight dialogues, I say. A erotic merger between organisational management and philosophy. In bed.

Anyway, tell me about yourself when you were young, Priya says. Tell me something you’ve never told anyone.

It’s simple: I used to want to write a perfect book, and then kill myself, I say.

Is that it? Priya asks.

The work, I called it, I say. Everything was about the work. I used write night and day. Or edit. It was mostly about editing.

And what was it about, the work? Priya asks.

I never knew, I say. It was supposed to be some absolute statement. To be an absolute book, totally incomparable. Like Lautreamont’s Maldoror, if you know that.

I don’t know anything about Lotry-what-not’s anything, Priya says.

It was supposed to say everything through a kind of inversion. By saying the opposite. I saw it as a Gnostic treatise.

And did you ever finish it? Priya asks.

I’m still trying to write it now, I say.

So you can kill yourself after? Priya says. How melodramatic.

It was cheating, because I knew I’d never finish, I say. And that I’d never write anything perfect. Or that was even any good.

Do you ever think it’s all been said before – that everything about romance has been said before? Priya says. That we can’t say a single new thing? … It’s as if all the words have already been prepared. All the scripts for lovers’ talk. All the things lovers have said. And we only get to quote …

Lovers always talk about their love, I say. Lovers are pleased with ourselves. Pleased with what has been given them, by way of the other. In our little bubble of love.

You make it sound terribly smug, Priya says.

It is smug, I say.

I don’t think we’re pleased with ourselves, Priya says. We’re kinda angsty.

Nature’s thrown us a treat, I say. We’re supposed to be grateful. To moon over one another in gratitude. When really it’s part of the whole machine.

What machine? Priya asks.

It’s the honey trap, I say. Nature’s honey trap. That’s what it’s called isn’t it: when they lure you in via someone pretty. Some hottie specifically sent out to target you. You see, nature wants us trapped. Confined. Seeking all our salvation from another …

Who should we be seeking it from?

We think romance is an exception, I says. That we’ve been given all this as a special gift. All these feelings … This elation … This craving … It’s all it’s supposed to be. That’s the very sane madness of lovers. Their rational irrationality. Their law-abiding prohibition. To which all of us succumb, without exception.

Aren’t we lucky? we think to ourselves, I say. Why can’t everyone be as lucky as us? And then we become evangelists of love. Trying to pair all our friends up. Telling people the story of our romance. How we got together. Our ur-story. About when the world relented. When the remorseless logic of it all just pulled back for a few moments. When we were granted an apparent reprieve.

I think it’s a reprieve, Priya says. It’s our secret kingdom. A secret just between the two of us. That no one will know but us.

God, hasn’t there always been enough of us? I say. Too much of us? Don’t you ever get tired of who we are?

You’re so meta, Priya says. You can’t just experience stuff. You can’t just give yourself over to things.

Nor can you, I say.

Touché, Priya says. But that’s your fault. You’ve made me philosophical.

Priya, picking a book from the shelf. Reading: Who, if I cried out, who would hear me among the angelic orders? Is this poetry? The kind of thing you read? … It’s like intruding on something, reading this. On some old European dream. What are you doing, reading this kind of thing? Who is it for?

I don’t know, I say. God, maybe.

I don’t know what God means, Priya says.

Is God manifest as the sky? This rather, I believe, I quote.

Who said that? Priya asks.

Another poet, I say.

Priya, reading: For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror / which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so, / because it serenely disdains to destroy us. / Every angel is terrible.

What’s wrong with us? Priya asks. Why aren’t we reached by this? Why aren’t we touched by this? Why don’t we have the time for this sort of thing? It should open us … to the infinite, or whatever. To the sky, or whatever. To death, or whatever. All those things. All those things our great-great-grandparents might have understood …

This poetry just zooms over my head, Priya says. Over our heads, because I don’t think you understand it either. It’s so beautiful. And too beautiful for us, for the likes of us. Once upon a time … once people would have set themselves to learn it by heart. To be able to quote this. To remember it all, line by line …

All your books, philosopher, Priya says. These old books. They’re from a different time and about a different time, only you haven’t understood that yet. They’re outdated, just as you’re outdated. Do you think you can live like this – like those old-time thinkers, in old-time jobs, in old-style unis?

You know what I think?: You’re playing at being a philosopher and I’m playing at having an affair with a philosopher, Priya says. You’re following your blind alley, as I’m no doubt following mine.

What’s your blind alley? I ask.

Romance, maybe, Priya says. This romance …

Silence.

It’ll only last for a while – that’s what I tell myself, Priya says. And then we won’t know each other …

Don’t say that, I say.

It will last for a while and burn itself out, and then you’ll forget me, and I’ll forget you, and that’s how it should be, Priya says.

And you’ll still be with him? I ask.

Sure I will, Priya says. I’ll be with him forever, I’m sure. It’ll just on and on.

And one day you’ll tell your husband all about it, I say. One day, when you’re feeling particularly close. On an anniversary, or something. On his birthday, or yours. You’ll tell him about your love affair – that’s what you’ll call it. It’ll all come out. To teach him not to take you for granted. To show him that could have lead an entirely different life had you chosen to. That would add an unexpected twist to your anniversary dinner, wouldn’t it? That would make him sit up and listen …

Silence.

We’re always at a remove from everything, aren’t we? Priya says. We’re always stepping out of the moment and looking down at it. Or looking up at it. Or looking sideways at it. But we’re never in it, are we? Or perhaps you are. But I’m not. Don’t get me wrong – I like being here with you. I like our erotic afternoons, but we’re so meta- … Talking about this stuff. Instead of … whatever …

Talking’s part of it, I say.

We’re always talking about it – our … relationship … such as it is … such as it isn’t, Priya says. It’s … parasitical. But what is it, really? Our ‘love affair’ in inverted commas? Our being together?

A way of warding off the afternoon, I say. As a way of using the afternoon. For ourselves. Not just … doing whatever we’d do.

Live like normal people, you mean? Priya says.

Maybe, I say.

And in the meantime, it’s at work, Priya says. It just chugs along. Does its own thing. Brings us together. Makes us … kiss. And fuck. And hang out. It’s working through us. It’s doing things to us – with us. It’ll get tired of us at some point.

What’ll get tired? I ask.

It – just it, Priya says. Our romance …

And then what’ll happen? I ask.

The enchantment will lift, Priya says. The spell will be uncast, or whatever. And we’ll wake up wondering what happened … Like Bottom’s dream, or whatever … And we’ll be none the wiser. And this whole affair will be like something we just dreamt up …

God, who else talks like this? Priya says. About life and death and everything? You’ve infected me with philosophy. You’ve made it okay to talk like this – as no one should be allowed to talk.

And there’s the patch of light, quivering, Priya says. How symbolic. How perfect. Is it supposed to teach us something? Something about our futility, or something. About true poetry?

What’s your theory of the universe, philosopher? Priya asks. Do you have one? What’s the use of philosophy if it doesn’t give you a theory of the universe? Fuck. Okay, a more friendly question: what do you actually write about?

The tohu vavohu, I say.

The tohu … what? Priya asks.

It’s from the Bible, I say. Chaos is the best word for it. Or evil. In the beginning God created the heavens and earth. And the earth was without form and void. That’s how the tohu vavohu is translated in the Bible: without form and void.

So God made chaos? Priya asks.

There’s a whole rabbinical tradition that argues that God made the world from chaos – by shaping the tohu vavohu,  I say.

Who cares? Priya says. Sell it to me, philosophy-boy.

It means God didn’t create the universe from nothing, I say.

So? Priya says.

And that God isn’t omnipotent, either, I say. Because the tohu vavohu couldn’t be definitely ordered. Chaos always threatens to break back in. That’s what happens with Noah’s flood and Jeremiah’s prophecies …

Now I’m no Biblical scholar or anything, but didn’t God, like, send Noah’s flood, Priya says. To punish him?

Sure, he unleashed the chaos, I say. He unlocked the doors and portals, and let it flood in.

So God was still in charge, Priya says. It was just a matter of creative destruction.

But maybe God isn’t always in charge, I say. The order of the world can’t hold back chaos.

But you don’t actually believe in God, do you? Priya asks.

It’s not a matter of belief, I say. It’s about an imaginary: the whole Christian imaginary. Which was predicated on the idea of natural order. You’ve heard of chaos theory, right? Of complexity theory. It’s saying the same thing: that chaos is ultimate. That we can try to hold it back, but that it all turns to chaos in the end.

Isn’t that, like the second law of thermodynamics? Priya asks. The one about entropy. Old news, right?

It’s about the unmanageable, I say. Becoming unmanageable. Becoming un-organisable.

I see what you’re doing there, Priya says. This is an anti-organisational management thing. Subtle. So you love chaos.

I don’t love chaos, I say. It’s not about loving chaos. Chaos can be evil, right – in fact that’s how the Bible thinks of it. Disaster. Collapse. The reversion of all things to formlessness, to the primordial Sea or the Deep or the wilderness, or the desert. Or it can mean contamination, the mixing of things that shouldn’t mix. General defilement. The dissolution of natural boundaries, limits. And that’s where it gets interesting. That’s where it’s about the unorderable. The uncontrollable. A kind of originary anarchy.

Sounds like the name of a metal band, Priya says. So this is what you write about: the Bible? Are you, like, a Biblical scholar? Do you read it in the original?

I’m not a scholar, I say. God … It’s just … I want to think about an exit from horror.

What horror? Priya asks.

From the world as it is, I say. From all this … From the natural cycles … from the Same returning over and again …

You despise the world, Priya says.

I despise this world, I say. Which is why I want to see it overturned.

How? In some cataclysm? Priya asks. In Noah’s flood all over again?

I don’t know, I say. In revolution, maybe.

Wow, you humanities types still believe in that, Priya says.

Not to believe in it … not to believe the world can be overturned is to be stuck, forever, I say.

Maybe that’s how it is: we’re stuck forever, Priya says. That’s what we call life.

That’s what you call life, I say. I don’t call it life. Life, human life, is a … breaking of forms. A breaking with nature, with the laws of nature. It’s a breakout from the prison, the natural prison. From this order of this world.

And what would happen after your revolution? Priya asks.

It’s not so much a revolution as an … apocalypse, I say. As a destruction of the present order of things. When chaos returns, like fury. Like the fury of God.

You want everything to be destroyed, Priya says.

I want all the wicked things destroyed, I say. The whole evil order. The corruption …

But you believe in love, too, right? Priya asks. That’s what you said the other day?

That’s part of it – love, I say. The one who loved us would destroy us, just like that. The one who truly loved us would understand what needed to be done. Love would mean death – my death. Our death. True love would mean the end of everything. In the name of love.

How did you get like this? Priya asks. How did you go this far?

Come on – you feel it too, I say. What you said the other day. About guilt. About what we’re doing now.

What we’re doing now … sure … The way we are, the way we’re being, just lying here, Priya says. Just lying here, corrupt … We’re … misusing our time, that’s what I was saying. We’re desecrating our time … See I can do it, too. I can talk like this, too. I can do self-loathing like a philosopher …

It’s not self-loathing, it’s world-loathing, I say.

There’s a desire in us to destroy: that’s how I see it, Priya says. To twist. To invert. This is nihilism, right?

Pure nihilism, I say.

What’s nihilism again? Priya asks.

That nothing means anything, I say.

But it’s worse than that …, Priya says. Because we’re actually mocking meaning. Scorning it … Your tohu-vav-whatever is just destruction. But we’re twisting things, philosopher. We’re deliberately making it worse.

Sin, I say. Sin is deliberate.

We’re at the bottom of the pit – just lying here, Priya says. We’re at the bottom of the pit, looking up …

At what? I ask.

At the sky, through the skylight, Priya says. At God, maybe …

Maybe we’re doing this because we want to be caught, I say. To be seen, sinning.

Isn’t that worse? Priya asks.

It means we want help, I say. And this is how we show it.

Sin as a call for attention, Priya says. Maybe. We do worse things and worse things because we want to be told off …

Because we want to die, I say. Which might be the same thing.

I’ve got afternoon amnesia, philosopher, Priya says. I’ve got a bad case of afternoon oblivion. Is it possible just to forget … everything? Except you, maybe. I haven’t forgotten you.

The world’s so still, isn’t it? Priya says. Nothing’s moving. The clouds aren’t moving. Just unbroken white. Just pallid daylight without depth. Where nothing’s revealed. Where everything is as it’s always been. Where banality’s banality and nothing else.

Your flat’s adrift in the sky, philosopher, Priya says. Like in Wizard of Oz. We’re just floating through the sky. There’s nothing but whiteness … There aren’t even any birds. Where have the birds gone? Where has everything gone? Where have we gone?

I want to shout something, just to show that I can, Priya says. Just to be able to do it. Just to be able to do anything. I don’t want to just give everything up. I don’t want to surrender. I don’t want to yield to this …I want to shout, philosopher. I want to be heard.

Who by? I ask. I hear you.

Not by you, Priya says. But by … God. I’m tired of being lost. I want to be found. I want God to hear me. I want to see God looking down at me through the skylight. God’s great eye. Wouldn’t that be something?