Work in Progress

We’re starting to drink and we will not cease our drinking. We’re starting – just starting – and this time it will never end.

We’ll drink. We’ll drink hard. We’ll drink into the night. And beyond the night! We’ll drink our way through the night, and through the morning. And maybe afternoon, as well.

 

We’ll drink until the end – we’ll push on until the end of the night. And beyond! And beyond it!

We’ll break through the night. We’ll shatter the night. We’ll tear the sky wide. We’ll rip open the sky.

Because this night is not enough for us. The sky is not enough. It’s sealed against us, and we’ll don’t want it to be sealed. It’s closed against us, and we don’t want it closed. We’ll slice it open. We’ll spill its guts. The guts of the sky! The innards of the sky!  

 

In a sense, we haven’t begun to drink. We haven’t found our way to the Great Drinking. We haven’t found our way to the plateau, not yet. We haven’t ascended in our drinking, climbed upwards. We haven’t risen in our drinking. The stars don’t flash above us, not yet. The sky doesn’t wheel around us.

 

The eternal night – that’s where we drink. The night that never ends. The night, where the sun never rises. Where eternal night simply journeys into itself. Presses into itself. Seems to collapse, into itself.

The night, lost in itself. Wandering in itself. The night that is its own labyrinth. The night, busy with itself, disappeared into itself.

That’s the  night we drink beneath. That’s the night we toast. That’s the night up to which our crises rise. And our prayers – our drunken prayers.

 

To drink until we pass out. Until we lie, unconscious. We don’t need to be conscious. We give up our consciousness. It doesn’t matter to us anymore. We simply want – what do we want? To lose our light.

Drinking deeper. Drinking all the way down. Drinking into the Urgrund and the Abgrund. Drinking into the abyss, and deeper than the abyss. Drinking-falling into Nothing. Into the Nothing above and the Nothing below. Drinking to that.

 

There’s no saving us. There’s no saving ourselves. We’re lost. Ruined. We’re abandoned. We’re only deepening our dereliction. We’re only furthering our loss of all true things.

This is a funeral. A permanent funeral. Of our hopes. No – this is a wake for our hopes. This is a wake for the ruination of our hopes. We’re staying up all night to mourn the ruination of our hopes.

 

We’re all guilty, right? Guilty – dreadfully so. Abysmally so. Ruinously so. We’re all guilty …

Is a judgement coming soon? A terrible judgement? A looming judgement? Don’t we hope so? Isn’t that what we want?

A judgement … that would declare us to have been in the wrong. To have lived in the wrong. A judgement that would tell us that we were wrong. That we’ve done unspeakable things. That our lives are full of unspeakable things. That we’re guilty with the guilt of everyone. With the guilt of everything …

Our cry for help. Our S.O.S. Our appeal. What is it that we want? More ruin More destruction. A final ruination. A final destruction. What do we need?

An island. A separate place. Where we can just live in peace as human beings. In simplicity. That’s what we need. And isn’t this night an island? Isn’t this pub?

 

We’re looking for time. We’re drinking for time. For a reprieve. We want a gap in the world being the world. We’re looking for a cessation of the world’s endless worlding. A holiday, a Sabbath, a minute’s peace: isn’t that what we’re seeking?

 

We’re the last drunks in the place. The last drunks. They’ve turned the lights on … they want to get rid of us. Of course they do! The bar staff want to go home. They have lives! They want to clear up and get back! They want to wipe down the tables! They want to lock the great door!

We’ve outstayed our welcome, as we always outstay our welcome. We’re remained too long, as we always remain too long. Their nights are long enough as they are, God knows. Having to deal with drunks like us! Having to humour drunks like us!

 

Drinking is utopian. We drink for utopia – to reach utopia.

 

We drink because there are things we cannot bear to think. We want there to be a limit to our thinking.

 

Words fail us. We don’t want words. We’re sloughing off all the words.

 

We’re trying to live, God help us. With the aid of alcohol. We depend too much on alcohol, of course we do! It isn’t good for us, all this alcohol! But we need a route out of ourselves. We need a way out, a royal route. We can’t get there all by ourselves. We can’t get there sober.

We disappoint ourselves, without alcohol. We bore ourselves. We compromise. We’re not the people we should be. We don’t rise. We don’t look upwards. We don’t aspire. God knows!

We’re limited people, sober. But drunk …Drunk, or half drunk … We’re no longer means-ends minded. We’re no longer project-oriented. We’re no longer goal-driven.

There’s a larger Plan, which is no Plan. A larger project, which is no project. A larger Means, without end.

 

We’re drinking ourselves to death – no doubt. But what other choice is there other than drink ourselves to death? It’s a creative suicide. It’s our own way of dying, which is to say, living.

All we do is stare at the horizon from which doom’s going to come. Waiting for the doom. As if nothing else were important.

Nothing else is important. There’s nothing that gives any meaning to our lives. That’s where all the meaning of our lives come from: the disastrous future. The meaning of our lives comes from non-meaning. Comes from the end.

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.