Work in Progress

Haven’t we always seen the world but as a future ruin?


Wasn’t the world always ruined for us? Wasn’t it always a work of ruination? Wasn’t everything we’ve done only part of the general ruination? Haven’t we only ever piled more rubble upon the rubble?


Why was it given us to know so many terrible things? Through a kind of instinct – a terrible instinct. Through our temperaments. Through our Grundstimmungen. Were we born with such a Stimmungen? Might there be other, lighter Stimmungen? Lighter ways to see the world? Not our apocalyptic bias, but a joyful one?


The dream that you might say yes, instead of no. that you might be able to affirm, rather than condemn.


Go beyond us, postgraduates. We hope for you because we want to hope for ourselves, to believe that even our lives are redeemable. Our love for you is kindness to ourselves – is love for what we might be, in another life. In your lives, maybe.


You’re our chance, postgraduates – because you are not us. You are our future – because we are not you. Carry us forward, but in a new way. On a new wave. Sweep us onward. Bear us further.

We’re tired of living this kind of life. We’re tired of this grisly epoch. We’re tired of ourselves.


You’re not cursed like we are, postgraduates. You’re not fallen. Innocence – that’s what you possess.

This is the interregnum between the end and the end. This is the playing out – the endless playing out. In its endless permutations. In its continual descent.

A bottoming-out that never quite bottoms out. An ending that never quite ends. A getting worse endlessly able to get still worse.

The never-ending end. The ceaseless cessation. When will the great finishing actually finish? Never.


Everything is a sign of the end. Everything is calling out to be ended. To be snuffed out.

All of Creation wants death, not just us. Everything wants to end. Cries out for it.

Everything’s ashamed. Has its head bowed. The Creation kneels, asking for the death blow.


The great desire for extinction. For the endgame to give way to the end.

Hasn’t everything served its purpose? Hasn’t everything done what it was made for? Hasn’t it all done enough? Seen enough? Been enough?


It’s gone on too long – of course. Obviously. And everything knows that, just as we know it. It all craves to be over. For the Judgement to be brought. For the end to come. For the blade to fall.

Why this senseless going on? Why this time without meaning? Why this endless andmoreagain?

It isn’t over yet: but why not? Will there be some grand finale? Some apocalypse? Some revelation?

Will we finally learn God’s plan? Will we be shown the Meaning of things? Will we sink to our knees and be actually shown it: the Meaning of things? The true sense of eschatology?


Not just our death wish, but the death wish of Everything. The death dream of everything. The song of death that’s sung by the Creation.


Hasn’t God given up on us? Hasn’t God given up on God? Does God want to die, too?


It’s time, of course it’s time. It’s beyond time.

These are the death agonies. We are the death agonies. The desire to die is agony in us. Everything we say – everything we do – is a way we say, Someone put an end to this.

Someone put it all down, the Creation! Someone place a pillow over its head! Someone administer a lethal injection!. Someone wrap hands around its throat, the Creation! Someone hang it all, the Creation! Someone pick it off with a sniper’s rifle! Someone just explode it, the Creation! Just car-bomb it! Just suicide-bomb it!


Let the logic play out. Let the end actually come to an end. And then what? Will a new cycle of history commence?

I don’t know. All I know is that it has to end.


We have a distaste for the Creation. It smells bad, to us. It tastes disgusting – like a corpse. The corpse of Creation. As though all of the Creation were dead. And had died a long time ago. And no one’s noticed the smell. The stench! Everyone just goes about their business, as though nothing had happened.


And this wine reminds us. This wine wakes us up.

We have to be alert. Our nostrils are filled with the stench. Our mouths … Our entire gustatory tracts. The great rotting and decaying.


The game is up, with this wine. The last hand has been played. The disgusting has finally revealed itself as the disgusting. It can’t pretend any further. The lie is up!


Evil. Malignancy. Chaos. It’s been there since the beginning, and before the beginning. Before the Creation – the act of Creation, there was something, not nothing.

But it wasn’t a thing. It was a teeming. It was a moving horror. A screaming, maybe. A screaming of an ancient god. A blind and senseless god.

There were gods like that, before the Creation. And there’ll be gods like that after the end too. And perhaps they were there all along, hiding. Skulking in the shadows.

But it’s here at last, the last day, the disgusting day. The day dawns, and it’s a disgusting dawn. Like cancer, spread everywhere. The cancer’s already spread. It’s a terminal case. It always was – a terminal case. That’s matter, right?


Our essential problem is how we live after the end. After we’ve died, which we already have.

So many deaths. Too many, really. How many times have we died?


A god is screaming, in this wine. A god is blind and screaming. Leviathan, maybe. Does Leviathan scream? And what about the Bug? Is the Bug singing in this wine?

You’ve been dormant until now, Helmut. You’ve been hibernating until now. Errupt, Helmut! Become the Heideggerian volcano! Drown us in Heideggerian lava!


What’s the Heideggerian life cycle, Helmut? Is it like in Alien – do you lay weird eggs? Do they hatch into the equivalent of, like, Heideggerian facehuggers? Do they disappear down your throat? Do they grow inside you, and burst out of your stomach? Is this all part of some devious plan to take over the world.


Is there a great mating cry of the Heideggerian, Helmut? Is it like Spock – only once every seven years? Will you unleash a great cry, hoping there might be another Heideggerian in the vicinity? Which is unlikely, since we’re in Newcastle! In the UK!

Ah, the lonely Heideggerian. There should be a song about that.


Jotting down your Heideggerian thoughts in your own Black Notebooks. What’s in your notebooks, Helmut – racist thoughts? Fascist thoughts? Are you writing the Little Book of Persecuting Jews?


You seem a lot happier, Helmut. You’re positively blooming in your Heideggerian skin. I guess you’re just busy being the best Heideggerian you can be.

In the other word, we are not dead. In the other world, we’ve never told a lie. In the other world, what we call death is what we call life.

In the other world, all the inversions are inverted. In the other world, the lies are untold.

In the other world, God is all in all. There’s no need for the word, God. There’s no need for the word, love. There’s no need for the word, peace.

But we’re in this world.

And what’s Organisational Management, in the other world?

Organisational Management doesn’t exist, in the other world.

And who are in the other world?

We’re alive, but not as we know it. In a different way. In an unimaginable way. Like angels, maybe.

Are we angels, on the other timeline? Beautiful.

We’ve been carried away on a disgusting wave. A disgusting wave on a disgusting sea. That’s part of the great ocean of disgust. AKA the universe.


We’ve swallowed the poison – the poison of the world. And Livia’s wine is the counter-poison.


We have to be disgusted. To be disgusted by what actually is disgusting – the world.


This is a disgust against disgust. That shows the disgusting. Reveals the world as what it really is – disgusting.

It’s against the lies, this wine. The lies we live by. And the lies that we tell ourselves about the lies.


We have to die to the lies. We have to die into truth.


The wine lifts the spell. The whole enchantment. Under which we’ve been living for our whole lives. All the lies. All the untruths.


The truth is revolting. The truth makes us gag.

Yes – in this world. But in another world, on the right timeline, this wine is the sweetest nectar. In the world beyond this, the wine is sherbert.

We’re made of humiliations. We’re nothing but humiliations. At every stage! At every level!

So thwarted. So beaten. Like dogs! Like curs!


Shouldn’t we be more than this? Should we be able to lift ourselves out of ourselves? Out of our pasts! Out of our pits!


How are we supposed to live, anyway? Must we always be drunk in charge of our lives? Or drunk and not in charge of our lives? Or hungover?


Isn’t everything just wrong? The entire universe? Hasn’t it all gone off course? Aren’t we on the wrong timeline? Of course we are.

Who would we have been, in our proper lives? Who would we have been, on the right timeline?


Always reeling from one catastrophe to another.

I like the way you can whip up torment out of nothing, Shiva. Zero to torment. Quite impressive, really. Like, torment just bootstraps itself through you.


There’s something groundless in your torment, Shiva. Something gratuitous. There’s no reason for it. It just surges out of nothing.


You’re very good at doing torment. It’s like, cue Shiva torment. That’s why Livia likes you.


Working up your hatred for poison and lies. Poison, Shiva. Lies! They’re telling lies to us. About poison! You go, Hindu boy!

A Hindu literature. A Hindu litearo-philosophy. A Hindu philosophical literature. The idiot-buch would have an Indian twist.


If any of us knew anything about the Upanishads, we’d quickly see through you. Like, how many Upanishads can you actually name? Have you actually read?


Time to draw the Indian sword out of its scabbard. Time to wield the Upanishads or whatever.

The postgraduates have been beamed up, or something. It’s the postgraduate rapture.

What about the party? I don’t understand.

It’s the postgraduates’ way of saying goodbye. They’ve joined the paragraduates now. They’ve escaped.


I can’t believe the postgraduates left us behind.

They’re in a better place now.


Why can’t we be beamed up, too?

Because we’re not as young. As pure.

What about Fiver – he’s gone, too.

He never finished his PhD.

Of course.


Didn’t you hear that whooshing sound? That was the postgraduates being beamed up. They’ve left us – this whole dimension. This timeline, or whatever. There’ll be no more postgraduates, ever again.

They were too good for the world.

We’ll never hear them sing, not anymore.

Which is it, philosopher: is it all unreal – or is it evil and disgusting and so on? Because those two things are very different.


Is everything unreal or evil and disgusting? Dissociation versus disgust – which is the more profound Grundstimmung?


Feeling unreal isn’t the same as feeling disgusted.

Maybe it’s the feminine version of the same thing.