Work in Progress

<Next phase: working up / combing what I've written so far into dramatic scenes.

Plot: a philosophy department in peril. It's being moved to Organisation Management. The old head of philosophy, Cicero, has jsut retired. The new one, the narrator, is having an affair with a fellow lecturer, the wife of the head of the School of Organisation Management. >

There’s a sweetspot of drunkenness you can hit. Where it becomes just improvisation. You can say whatever you want. Extemporizing, infinitely. Taking it where you want to. Fuck.

Where do you want to take it?

I don’t know. I don’t know what I want.

Anyway, God … back to God.

You always want to come back to God.

That’s because God … God … means something. Or nothing. Or nothing that’s something. Or something’s that nothing.

God’s the biggest thing you can say. The greatest thing.

How long are we going to talk like this? Forever? I get tired of it …

One day well reach something. One day, we’ll say something. We’ll find our way there. Where? Wherever it is. Wherever it goes to. What goes to? Our … path …

None of this matters. None of this .. matters. All this talk.

I agree. But we still talk. We talk because time goes on forever. And talk can go on forever, too. All this talk. It’s disgusting in its way. All this time to waste.

Waste is a form of prayer.

Is it?

Deliberately sacrificing time. Giving it up.

To what?

To this.

To being stoned?

God’s been revealed as NOTHING, that’s what Scholem says. That’s all God is: the, like, VOID.

At least it shows that God is something.

No, he’s nothing.

But nothing is a something.

Nothing is the absence of something.

Which means there’s something. Nothing – the nothing – points to something. Dialectically.

Either God exists or he doesn’t exist – it’s simple.

Unless existence itself isn’t something you can say of God – Eckhardt said that in, like, the thirteenth century. And got burned at the stake for it.

Which just means God, like, super-exists. That he exists, in inverted commas, in some higher way. God is absent, and that absence is present … in certain experiences. You can, like, feel God. Tune into him.

Sounds good.

So you can get on God’s wavelength. On, like radio god.

And what does radio god play?

Bands like the Divine Absence, the Holy Whatnots, the Negative Theologians, the Meister Eckhardt Five, The Angel of Silesius ..

So do we have freedom? Are we actually free?

We have the freedom to laugh at our lack of freedom, the fact that we have no freedom, and that we’re even lost without freedom.

Is this our freedom: sitting around talking shit?

We’re hopeless. But we’re hopeful in the way we share our hopelessness. In our capacity for hope.

Is that it – is that all we get, a fucking capacity for hope?

The conditions for hope are there.

Why, because we can talk about our hopelessness? Because we can say how shit everything is?

The worst is not, so long as we can say, This is the worst: that’s what Edgar says in King Lear. Hopelessness is not, so long as we can, We’re hopeless …

The way we’re hopeless is very old hat. It was a European philosophy cliché from 1940. It’s been done. By Jean-Paul Sartre or the theatre of the absurd, or whatever. It’s all mapped out for us, our so-called hopefulness. It’s all become a cliché now: despair, hopelessness, the usual existentialist bullshit. Especially anxiety. It’s all been done, written about, dramatised, or whatever. There isn’t any room for us. Everything we feel and think and say is a cliché.

So let’s kill ourselves, or has that been done, too?

It’s all been done. We’d better just live on, which we will do anyway, in total mediocrity.

Anyway, the time to actually kill ourselves is long past. We missed that appointment, like we missed everything else.

At least they had war and stuff in 1940. And communism. At least they could nurture revolutionary dreams. See we should really have lived during the Russian revolution. Or the French Revolution. Or some revolution. When things could change. Instead of just getting worse.

I think we’ve covered everything.

I think we’ve covered everything in shit.

We’ve said enough.

We’ve always said enough. Everything we say is too much. Words on top of words. Layers of words reaching up to heaven.

 

The nihilism’s become too great. It’s, like, flipping over. Like what’s supposed to happen with Earth’s magnetic poles.

 

Why do you get to have me at the height of my so-called beauty?

I share it with your husband.

Why did you deserve anything?

 

That face you do. That one. When …

When what?

When we’re fucking.

Do you like it?

 

You’d like a serious love, wouldn’t you? A heavy browed French love. All moody. This doesn’t quite measure up, does it? Poor you. You want someone who takes it all desperately seriously.

 

You think there’s some vast, silent coup going on. Some sublime takeover from on high. Maybe you’re right … Is that what we’re living through? Are we fucking in the middle of that? When there are, like, Great Historical Things happening?

 

What if we were actually together – what then? Who would we become? Another unbearable, stifled couple. Another mediocre couple. Isn’t that what the world needs: more mediocre couples?

 

I hate nature.

What if we’re not natural? What if we were produced against nature?

Nothing’s against nature.

But what if? What if we’re some fluke? Some flaw?

 

We’re approaching the heart of the afternoon. We’re going to catch the afternoon out. Doing whatever it does. Afternooning, or whatever.

 

We’re zombies – we’re already dead. They’re just letting us wander around, the walking dead. But they want us more dead. To die deeper.

 

All the illicit affairs people have had. All the animal affairs, by all the bored people. All the restless people.

 

I make up long speeches to say to you, but then when I get here, I forget what I was going to say. I walk around talking to you in my head. Just imagining you.

 

You have an optimistic and trusting nose. How can you tell? What have noses got to do with anything? You can see everything in the nose. And the chin. And in the shape of the eyes.

 

You have such kind fingers, though your thumb looks rather stubborn.

 

The sky’s changing. It’s purple. Rainclouds coming in. Or whatever. I didn’t think a sky could be purple like that.

God, the way you can see the whole sky.

 

Rain on the skylight. It’s very calming.

 

I was never into casual sex. Too disturbing.

So you’re not sex positive.

I’m sex negative.

You do surprise me.

 

Walking to St Marys.

Are you worried you’ll be seen?

Maybe I’d like to be seen. With my lover.

What about you couple friends: what if they saw you?

Our couple friends are quite dull. We’ve had a million dull evenings. Very dreary. This is far more exciting.

But it won’t be exciting forever.

 

We want to live we’re pigs, right. We want to wallow in this debasement. We want to be damned. To damn ourselves. We want to be punished by God or something. We want to be sinners.

No we don’t. don’t fucking fool yourself. don’t pretend to be growing a conscience.

 

Look, our affair is as mediocre as anything else. It’s not even risky. It’s not even life or death. It’s just another consumer option. 

 

Do you want to push yourself to become the best organisational manager you can be? Rise to the top in organisational management studies?

 

Do you fuck your husband, or make love to him?

 

Today could be the greatest day in the history of the world.

 

You think I talk too much, don’t you? You’d like me to be solemn. You’d like me to be serious. You’d like me to say Serious Things. You’d like a muse. Are you disappointed?

 

Maybe we should invite another woman along to pep things up. Or a man. Maybe we should be a thruple. It’s a consumer option, right?

 

Look, I’ve got you to smile. Woo.

 

Have we wasted time all our lives. Have we wasted our lives until now. Will we waste them afterwards?

 

I remember the first time I wanted to kiss you.

Do you?

 

What are you supposed to do on days like this?

Gaze into the nothingness.

 

Vagueness: do philosophers ever write about that? They should. The fucking vague-out.

 

Why do you care so much about God? I thought God had no place in the organisational management world.

Maybe God’s the ultimate organisational manager.

 

I got all dressed up for you. And now I’ve undressed for you. Come to bed, philosopher.

 

I’m just living from orgasm to orgasm these days.

 

Do you mind that no one knows about us?

 

And it’s not as if you’re the man of my dreams. You were just there, that’s all.

Thanks.

It’s not as if I picked you from a crowd. It’s not like it was you and only you.

But you’re here, aren’t you?

I’ve been drawn in. You’re intriguing, I admit that. I’ve been caught up in your mad little world.

 

I love you more than I ever felt possible. What would it mean to say those words?

Would you like to say them?

It always sounds like we’re quoting. Everything we say.

 

This is playing at love. That’s what we’re doing, both of us: playing at love.

 

Are we just fucking or is this something else?

Just fucking.

 

I shouldn’t be falling for you: isn’t that what lovers say?

Is that what you feel: that you’re falling for me?

 

Thinking about what our romance might be. What it could be. If we allowed it …

We’d be just like anyone else.

 

I don’t even know who you are. You’re a mystery. Capital M. I only know you as a sexual animal. That nothing can hold back.

Grr.

 

Let’s go back to the day when sex was invented.

 

This is our … heyday.

 

You’re the kind of person who feels at home on holiday. Who knows what to do on holiday. Right?

You were made to luxuriate. You’re at ease with being at ease. You luxuriate in luxuriance. To have, like, romantic intrigues.

 

Love is just the obverse of organisational management. You’ve turned the world into organisational management, and you want to escape. Love is what organisational managers dream of. That’s where you put all your hopes.

 

There’s something about all this that’s meta for you. You’re enjoying your enjoyment. Savouring it. Luxuriating in it. Like a cat.

 

I think you incite cruelty. You bring it out in others. You want it. You’re a submissive, is that it? And the way you don’t really react.

I just want to be cruel. I don’t know if I like myself like this. I don’t know whether it’s good for me. See my husband will just tell me to stop. Whereas you … encourage it.

I’m glad this is just an affair, I’m glad we’re not married, or anything. I don’t know what I’d do to you.

See, if you were really handsome, more handsome, you might be taken more seriously. Girls would swoon over you. They’d think you were deep.

Is that a thing anymore, to be thought deep? Do girls really go for that?

 

I think my husband’s kinda transhumanist. He talks about the transhumanist inevitability. He thinks transhumans are going to take over the world.

Is that, like, a warning?

I think it’s a threat …

 

You can’t count on it. Some days you can write and some days you can’t and it’s all a mystery.

So the Muse hasn’t visited you today.

It’s all so pathetic, isn’t it? Writing things no one’s interested in. For an audience of no one. That no one will even publish. By someone who can’t actually write.

At least you have ambition.

A stupid ambition.

At least there’s something that makes you get up on the morning – think about that.

 

The function of the artist is very clear: he must open a workshop, and repair the world there, in fragments, as it comes to him.

Who said that?

Francis Ponge.

Who's he? Or she? 

 

Let’s have a non self-reflexive moment. Let’s have a naïve moment. Let’s have a unselfconscious moment. Of, like, pure enjoyment.

I don’t know what that is.

 

I need to be with you – that’s how it is. I need you. There, I’ve said it.

Is it hard to admit that: dependency?

Quite hard.

 

Anyway, what else can we do besides sex?

Take a walk on the beach. Outside.

We’ll be seen.

By who? Besides, I thought you didn’t care.

That was in the first days. Now … I think it would make things … inconvenient.

 

And I like our Thing. I like your Thing.

 

We haven’t run out of things to do in the bedroom yet.

Don’t pretend to be so virile. You can barely get it up.

 

Sex can be such an effort. I just feel a great can’t be bothered, most of the time. Not with you, though.

Because coming round here is an Occasion. Because you’re preparing for it, anticipating it. Anticipating cock. Whatever.

 

Are your … faculties getting better or worse? Are you a better philosopher today than yesterday? Do you think you’re get better as you get older? Or do you think you’ve peaked?

 

What about organisation management?

See, I don’t take organisational management – that’s what we call it – as seriously as you take philosophy. I’m not an organisational management person through and through.

Thank God.

 

All these feelings passing through us. Having their way with us. 

 

Philosophy in the Bedroom: is there really a book called that? Go on, read me a section.

It’s too filthy. Really, it’s disgusting.

I don't mind filth.

 

The way we talk about IT. IT’s this, IT’s that … God … What is IT anyway?

Us.

Us. God. Lovers just feeding on their so-called love …

It’s all just biological. It’s supposed to make us want to have a child.

Do you want a child?

I don’t know. Do you?

Would you like a child with me? Like, a cuckoo child, a philosophy child who me husband and I could bring up in bourgeois comfort?

What about you. Do you want a child?

My husband doesn’t want one, and nor do – did – I. You know what: I’d like to scandalise him by just saying, I’m pregnant, and it’s not yours.

Would he leave you? Would he kick you out?

Maybe. Probably.

But he doesn’t know – he doesn’t sense it – about us.

I’ve told him you’re my gay best friend. What a cliché. Actually, I didn’t say you were gay. He just assumed. He’s from Middlesborough. They’re provincial up there.

 

So do they just fade, these feelings?

They would if we lived together. That would kill anything. Fifteen years I’ve been with my husband. Fifteen years!

So why do stay with him?

Pair bonding, or something. I don’t know … This is getting very soap-opera-y. Let’s talk of more lofty things. Or more wistful things.

 

What are you writing about?

Your beauty. Your charms.

Oh don’t say that. Such a cliché. You’re writing philosophy.

 

You came into my life, all philosophically dashing and philosophically handsome. Ha!

 

You’re searching for profundity. Something all sublime and revelatory. And I’m just going to disappoint you.

 

This Indian summer’s lasting forever. It’s carrying us off.

In what direction?

Sin.

 

It’s supposed to be an African plume. It’s Saharan sand that we’re supposed to be seeing in the air. It’s turned the moon pink.

 

You can’t actually get it up – not properly. You’re not very potent, are you? You’re supposed to come, like prematurely. Did you ever come prematurely?

You’re not very virile. The levers and cogs of your body don’t work properly. Clearly. I’m not sure you can satisfy me.

And you want to be satisfied?

I want to be ravished.

 

Maybe I shouldn’t get in your way. Maybe I shouldn’t here, and you should just drink on your own.

Don’t go.

Why not? Why should I go?

Because you’re so fucking hot.

I’m not even hot. I don’t believe in my hotness.

I’ll make you believe in it.

You’re too drunk. You’re not hard enough.

 

Singing: Most of my .. fantasies are about making someone else come. That’s an old Smog song.

Is it true? Are they?  

I like eating you out. That’s what it’s called, isn’t it?

Disgusting. It’s disgusting to hear you say it.

 

How shall we do it now? What page of the Kama Sutra have we reached? I’m joking. Don’t you think we should do it more interestingly?

 

I think millions and millions of people are going to die.

Is that your vision?

It’s not a vision. It’s a feeling. I feel things. Vast things.

And you feel millions of people are going to die.

Yes.

 

Why isn’t the sky just black? Why is it blue, anyway?

How should I know?

I thought you knew the answers to questions like that.

 

God … we’re so diminished. Do you ever feel that: diminished? Fuck … we’re the end of some dreadful process … we’re some grotesque experiment … in how not to live. How to ignore life. How to miss life.

 

I want to pray. I want to sink to my knees. And pray to the God of high modernism. To the absence of God that all of them lamented. Because at least they felt the absence of God, which is more than we do.

 

Fucking in the afternoon and talking about God. That’s what my life’s about now.

 

God help us all. God bless us all.

We don’t know what God means. We don’t know what the … soul is. We wouldn’t know what could help us. We’re distressed. We live in the time of distress. And we barely understand how deeply it rends us.

 

I know there’s evil in the world. I even know it’s increasing. I think my husband is doing evil things. I think he serves the evil empire.

 

It’s getting cold, philosopher. 

Isn’t it, though?

It's getting autumnal. Our eternal summer is over. 

So we can stay in and huddle up warm. You can feel the cold pouring down your walls. Should it do that?

 

And I’ve driven here for this. Instead of exercise class.

This isn’t good for you.

Yeah, but what is?

 

This is us. Contemplating the nothingness of the day and our nothingness and our obscurity and the fact that we’re going nowhere and the earth is just falling falling through space forever. God. The whole senseless thing. The whole blind universe thing. The whole armies clashing in the night thing. The whole just-more-of-it thing. The whole never-ending thing.

 

The tohu vavohu, that’s what I write about. The unmanageable, In essence. Even God couldn’t manage it. Even he couldn’t banish it in the act of creation, with his, Let there be light.

Who believes in any of that stuff?

You don’t have to believe in it literally. It’s all there, in the book of Genesis.

God was never omnipotent, see. That was all a Christian lie. Creating everything out of nothing: forget that. Order – so called order – is provisional; exceptional. Surrounding order is chaos. Fringing it. Even God can’t tame it, so you have no hope, organisational manager.

 

What are the main theories of organisational management? Who are the up and coming organisational managers? Organisational manager theory – does such a thing exist? Do they make really strange use of Deleuze and other stuff?

 

How, like, old is the field? When did organisational management begin? Do real organisational managers read academic organisational managers?

 

I’ll bet there are some secret philosophers who made the move to organisational management. Like, working in secret. In code. Pretty smart.

 

The skylight dialogues. A erotic merger between organisational management and philosophy. In bed.

 

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

And are you any better? What’s so great about you? What do you bring to the table? Who are you supposed to be?

At least I know I’m fucking dead. At least I don’t pretend. At least I know I’m a corpse. At least I know I’ve got nothing to say. Nowhere to be. Nothing to do. At least I know my … redundancy. That it’s all played out. That the whole world’s been placed in the hands of these maniacs.

 

I can’t believe I’m seeing you like this. Drunken you. I don’t think I like drunken you.

Have a drink. Catch up.

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

You prefer me miserable. You like a miserable philosopher lover.

This is why you’re so miserable. Because you drink too much.

It’s all worth it, anyway. I write better when I’m drunk. Sometimes, anyway. God. I don’t live my life to impress you.

What are you doing to yourself?

What am I doing? It’s what the world’s doing. It’s what the universe is doing. It’ what Weltzschmerz is doing. This is where it leads, all of it. This is where we end up.

Fuck you.

Are you going to storm out. Is that what you do? Really?

I don’t want you like this. I don’t like seeing it.

 

You could go to AA. Why not? Fellowship. Support. But that’d be too obvious, wouldn’t it? … You’re supposed to admit you can’t quit on your own. To put yourself in the hands of a higher power. I like that idea.

What would your higher power be?

God, maybe.

Do you believe in God?

I think God believes in me. I think I’m a dream in the mind of God.

So God’s dreaming all this. God’s dreaming you and dreaming me.

Maybe.

 

This is how you live? This is how you spend your time? Torturing yourself, basically. Drinking too much, basically. Every night … It’s repugnant. It’s repellent.

Are you drunk now? Is that how weak you are? Drunk and sitting at your laptop, expecting … what? Believing what might happen?

Just drinking, and what for? Drinking into the day, all alone. It’s pathetic. How do you think it’s going to end up? It can’t be going anywhere good. Who are you trying to be?

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

You’re so weak. You’re a weak man. I despise weak men. I despise weakness. I didn’t think you were like this.

You’ll need to find someone else, you know. Someone who can look after you, or whatever.

Okay, I won’t drink anymore.

You can drink all you fucking like. How much do you actually hate yourself?

 

Let’s go back. I’d like to be alone with you. I’d like …

To be centre of my attention. For me to tell you how great you are. How beautiful you are. How hot you are.

Yes … all those things.

 

Am I supposed to go after you? What am I supposed to do? Who am I supposed to be? We have our allotted roles, don’t we?

 

I’m banging my head against … what? Everything. The entire world. The entire fucking universe. I’m banging my head against me Against who I’ve become.

 

These dialogues. The skylight dialogues. Leading … nowhere. Just tracking the fucking decline.

You like this talk. You like me talking like this. You want a doom prophet all to yourself. You feel it too. Don’t deny it. That’s why you’re here.

I’m here because I like to fuck.

You’re here because you feel like me. Because I speak for you, too. Isn’t that funny? I never thought …

That an organisational manager can feel anything?

Yeah, maybe. Maybe.

That an organisational manager has a soul.

Maybe that.

 

God. When I speak to you, I feel so phony. I say these things.

I like it when you talk. I like it when you hold forth. You seem so certain of everything.

I seem like an idiot. Fuck. Fuck.

At least I’m not content. Perish the thought. At least I’m not settled. At least I’m not comatose.

 

You be with him forever. You’ll be holidaying and going on driving trips and going out with couple friends. That’s the truth of it.

Yes, well, you have to live.

 

It makes me interesting to you.

Yeah, as a case.

You’re interested. You want to follow me down the drain.

I want my own drain.

You’re lured. That’s why you come here.

I come here for sex, not death. Laughter.

God, what a dead end. How futile this is. It’s going nowhere. Day after day like this. It isn’t good … This isn’t part of the Good.

What’s the Good?

Not this.

 

Every day grows more sordid. We’re growing more sordid. I need a wash.

Take a shower.

I need a spiritual wash. I need to be spiritual cleansed. And I don’t know how. We’ve grown so corrupt.

 

All this is a waste of time.

But I like wasting time. I like burning time up. Using it for nothing. It’s my revenge on timetables and deadlines …

 

Sure, this isn’t the gym, is it? This isn’t sexercise. This isn’t a sports fuck.

You’re tired of happy happy. You want to destroy your life. You want to wager it. You’re bored in some fundamental sense.

Aren’t we all?

You want sabotage. You’re a ruiner. A destroyer. You want to tear things apart. You want to be torn apart. You’re a gambler. You want to be caught. You want some big emotional scene.

Do I?

 

You find my little world interesting enough.

Don’t kid yourself. It’s your body I want.

 

I think we’ve covered everything.

I think we’ve covered everything in shit.

We’ve said enough.

We’ve always said enough. Everything we say is too much. Words on top of words. Layers of words reaching up to heaven.

I think I’ve caught the void from you. Is it contagious?

 

What’s it like being one of your students? God. Pouring all your despair into their ears. Is this what they pay fees for?

 

I’ll miss our talks. I’ll miss talking like this.

It isn’t over yet.

It is though, really. It was always over. 

 

We’re stranded in the bedroom. In your flat. We’ve suspended the world in your studio flat. We’ll never leave. We’re here forever. We’re stuck here. Some part of us will always be stuck here. Forever and ever.

 

You should have a word with your landlord. The double glazing unit’s failed. What a depressing sight. And all those dead flies …

 

Our romance. Our love affair. Laughter. Doesn’t it sound stupid? It’d be okay if you’re French. If you were European. It probably makes sense over there.

The English can’t be sexual in an adult manner. It isn’t part of our culture. Don’t you agree?

We’re having a go at it. We can’t but be self-conscious. We can’t but be disengaged.

So we should have le sex.

 

What would we do all day, if we were together?

We could work at opposite ends of the table. You could be doing your organisational management work, and I’d be doing my philosophy work. Of course, it’s not his and hers offices, but still …

 

I think I’ve forgotten how to read. I can’t read anymore. Is there such a thing as reader’s block? God, all these books … I don’t think I want anything to do with books anymore …

 

I think you made up the void. I think it’s a name for miserabilism. I think the void’s just a lack of fresh air and exercise. You should get out more. Feel the sun on your skin.

 

What’s going on out there?

What’s ever going on out there? Nothing. Everything. The most important things. The least important things. People getting on with their lives.

 

Does anyone else visit your studio? I can’t imagine you having dinner parties up here. Are you into solitude? Is that your thing? Do you like to contemplate things all alone?

 

There’s nothing to say about sex. Nothing that doesn’t sound stupid, anyway.

So sound stupid.

I don’t see why we have to talk about it. Why can’t we just do it? There is no philosophy in the bedroom.

That’s where you’re wrong.

 

The sky’s thinking about itself. It’s thinking its own thoughts.

Is it thinking about us?

It’s got other things to think about.

 

I feel disgusting today,

 

Maybe it shouldn’t just the two of us. It’s very intense, isn’t it – just the two of us. Always the two of us. No one to bounce off. No one to set us off in new directions. No one to talk about. No other couples, or anything. It’s very … self-devouring, or whatever. Self-reflexive. Just bent back upon itself.

 

There’s something unfulfilled in you, too, organisational manager. You don’t believe in anything you say.

I’ve always thought I’d be better off doing something practical. Instead of, like, lecturing. I should start my own business. Go on Dragon’s Den, or whatever.

Do you have an amazing business idea?

I have several.

I don’t believe you.

Actually, I’m just someone who could go into a business and reorganise it. Make It more efficient. More … productive. Amazing. I could operatioanlise it more effectively.

 

Maybe we should ask each other questions. What’s your earliest memory? What’s your favourite film? What did you like to eat most, growing up? What’s your favourite tipple? How did your parents meet?

I don’t think I’m that interested in your past.

Thanks.

A love affair is about the present. It’s about now.

What’s happening now?

 

Tell me about something that happened to you when you were young.

When I was young … I lived an ordinary life. Compared to you. 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.

Of course you were. You were determined to be extraordinary. Which means you’ll always run up against my ordinariness. I’m just ordinary. Just Jane mundane. Are you disappointed?

No.

What you really want is a European. An East European, probably. Full of Eastern European promise. The inheritor of decades of suffering. And black humour. The darkest humour – forged by all the oppression, or whatever. Full of Eastern European folklore …

 

I always wanted to write the perfect book, and then kill myself. The work, I called it. Everything was about the work.

And did you ever write it?

Maybe I’m trying to write it now.

And kill yourself?

But that’ll never happen. Because I’ll never write anything perfect. Or even any good.

 

So you’re ready to slide in alcoholism.

Perhaps I’m already there.

It’d be romantic for you, alcoholism. It’d be … an artistic destiny. You’d be a truer philosopher, that’s what you’d think. Like you’d been driven to drink because of your profundity. Or maybe that you’d become profound from drinking …

 

Have you ever read the stats on how many children have no genetically relationship to the husband?

Is that what you’d like: a child with me? A cuckoo in the nest?

Maybe.

The fruit of my sober womb. Of my all-too sober womb.

 

Why are you with me? Why do you want to be with me?

For the sex.

No, seriously – what do we actually have in common? Why me? Why not anyone else?

Because you’re … you. Is that a good reason?

It’s because I’m here. Right in front of you.

 

Are you going to start drinking now? In the afternoon?

Why not in the afternoon?

What about decency? What about decorum?

Fuck decency. Fuck decorum.

I’m doing this to you, aren’t I? Driving you to drink. Driving you … somewhere wrong …

Would you like to have that effect?

I have to admit it, I do … I like being … efficacious. I like the idea that the universe isn’t entirely indifferent to my presence …

 

Do philosophers ever write about lust? They should. A philosophy of lust. What would that look like?

 

I want to do it again.

Do you really. So soon?

Why – can’t you get it up?

I’ll … try.

It shouldn’t be hard … I mean difficult. Whereas this should be hard. And what do you know – it is. A miracle.

 

What if I did some dance for you? If I went all … sexy … or is that too sleazy for you? What if I gave you some love-bites? What then?

Then nothing.

What If you gave me some? What would happen then? Our secret would be out.

 

Well, the day’s wearing on. I must away. I can’t think of a good excuse why I should be away any longer than this.

 

Who am I, for you? That’s what I want to know.

I’m blocking your vista. I’m getting in the way of your precious work. Of your thinking-time. Or your reading time. Of your writing.

 

Maybe all this is the opposite of organisational management. Is it the opposite of philosophy?

 

Reading: 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 we doing, reading this kind of thing? Who is it addressed to?

Someone, over our heads. God, maybe. Some European God.

What’s wrong with us? Why aren’t we reached by this? Why aren’t we touched by this? Why don’t we have the time … the space 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.

 

Do you ever wonder how deeply dead we are? How far things have gone wrong? The fact that this poetry just zooms over my head. 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. And deliver it.

And look at us. We’re fallen. Desperately so. And yet the word, God, still means something. And the word, angels. And the words, angelic orders. The first lines …

I think we’re fallen. Desperately fallen. Because we don’t lament our fallenness. We don’t experience it, not really. It hasn’t reached us, in our depths.

We don’t have any depths. We’re unanchored. We’re drifting. But we don’t know it.

 

I swear time’s slowing down. It’s supposed to go quickly when you’ve having fun.

Is that what we’re doing: having fun?

 

The chapters of our love. What chapter are we on now?

 

It could all just end. If he finds out. Then that’ll be it. We’ll never see each other again. It could be snatched away at any moment. How precarious. He could have followed me here. He could be looking up at this window now, wondering which number flat it is.

 

I keep talking about you to his friends. Our friends. All of them are so old. So much older than I am.

What do you tell them?

About my new gay best friend.

 

I can’t stand the deception anymore.

Really?

So I told him everything.

And then what?

He smashed things up. It was quite impressive really. I didn’t know he had it in him.

How soap-opera-y.

So this is the last time we’ll ever see each other. This is goodbye.

I think I should be allowed a goodbye fuck.

You’re shameless.

It had to end sometime, didn’t it?

This’ll be good for you. You can meet someone else.

These are the most clichéd lines. Why are we speaking clichés? It’s painful.

Are you going to miss me?

Don’t say stupid things.

 

I won’t be able to save you from philosophical gravity anymore. From high-minded seriousness. I’m not serious enough, that’s the problem.

So, what did we learn? What was the great lesson? What can we take from this? What next? Fuck. Nothing’s ever going to make sense. Closure. Is that what we need?

So we’re actually not going to see each other again?

Maybe by accident. And then we’ll be embarrassed. What will we say? What did we ever say?

You’ll still have to write your book about afternoons. Our afternoons. Your philosophy of fucking in the afternoon. Laughter.

 

We could host dinner parties. We could drive to visit friends …

What friends do we have?

… Spend long nights with our besties.

What besties would we have?

 

You should write a memoir.

Now you’re joking. A memoir of what?

Of nothing happening. Do they teach you to write about nothing – about nothingness – in philosophy?

 

And your husband, head of it all … It’s his empire … I liked his three-piece suit. It gives him some distinction. Is that why you went for him?

The question is why I went for you.

I suppose you’ve had a series of lovers. I suppose he likes it.

No, actually. Nothing like that.

And his northern accent. And his easy going manner.

 

What conclusion have we come to?

That lust is all. That fucking trumps all. Is that it? The desire to fuck. The addiction to each another.

There’s a whole world of people out there, but only you will do. You’re the only one for me. The only one.

The only other one, anyway.

 

My husband’s an enthusiast. He thought it was a good idea, the philosophy meets organisation management thing. A cross fertilization. Exploring synergies.

How can you use these words? Without irony. Without quote marks. Why’s everything supposed to be so adaptable? Why is everything supposed to plug into everything else?

 

The management styles of your husband. The organisational management style.

 

The sea’s so far out. Let’s walk out there. Let’s see how far it out it’s gone.

 

Everyone’s gone mad from low tide. From this extra low tide. Will there be an extra high tide now? Will Cullercoats essentially flood?

 

Piles of seaweed, rotting. Flies.

I that flostam? Is that what flotsam looks like? How do you tell it apart from jetsam?

 

The tide’s out. Life’s out. And we’re just stranded. Nothing has any meaning – any context. Nothing’s borne by anything. It’s just deposited. Just left here. 

 

Are there whales out there? Or at least dolphins. You can see seals up at St Mary’s lighthouse.

What do they do?

Lie there, fatly.

 

Everything’s wheeling. The clouds are wheeling. The gulls are wheeling.

 

Is it low tide? High tide? I can never work out the tides.

I think it has an effect on mood. This is a high tide mood. Or a low tide one, I can tell.

 

Those guys with metal detectors. What are they looking for? What are they hoping to find?

 

There comes a dog. Hello, dog. What do you want, dog? Where do you stand on animals, philosopher?

What would it be worth to write your magnum opus? If the devil offered you a deal, what then? Would you accept? Your eternal soul for writing something of significance? Something that would save your name from oblivion. That would let you rise above the human herd. That would let you have a thought that was all your own. Would you do it?

 

Does it actually matter to you how people knew your magnum opus was a magnum opus? Like, accepted all at once as a major work in the field? Or would you be happy for it be a slow burn? A cult favourite? Something shared among the ones really in the know – the cognoscenti. The philosophical elite. Imagine: you’d be a philosopher’s philosopher.

 

You want the way to be clear so you can try to write your magnum opus. You’ve cleared away the obstacles. You’ve no excuse. You have your job. The years open ahead of you. Time to begin your major work, your life’s work. What you’ll be known for.

What if you can’t write it, do you ever wonder that? What if you’ve got nothing to say?

What will be your consolation prize in life, if you can’t do it? What will you get for being a runner-up? Will you disappointed in yourself? If you never quite make it, I mean. When will you give in? Give up?

The theologians are falling, one by one. The theologians are giving up. The theologians are in despair – total despair. The theologians are losing confidence. They haven’t got an idea in their heads. And all since they were moved to chemical engineering.

 

Moving theology to chemical engineering. Look what it did to them! A deliberate attempt at demoralisation. They’re teaching in laboratories, for God’s sake. They have to align their strategic plans with chem eng strategic plans.

It’s knocked the theology out of theology. And God knows, the theologians were scared enough for their futures. This is a godless world! And the theologians tried their best to devise theologies for a godless world.

Theologies without theology! Theologies without God! Ingenious! Brilliant! But was it enough to save them?

Every day, the compromise. Every day, living what we should not live. What should not be acceptable to live.

Every day, the contract is broken. The social contract. The existence contract. The ontological contract. The life and death contract.

Every day, we learn it anew: that we should not bother. That we should not be alive.

Every day, trying to rise up against the fatality. Trying to protest the fatality. And falling again, because of the fatality.

 

We want to die for keeps. We want to perma-die.

 

Nothing ever rises to apocalypse. The world never just bursts spontaneously into flame. The world itself can’t be bothered to end. The universe limps on.

 

We haven’t reached the right level of hatred.

We don’t hold ourselves in sufficient tension with what things are.

 

Hatred should be a purifying blast, like when Cyclops takes off his glasses in X-Men. There’s a way of destroying the world in hatred.

 

There’s a practice. An asceticism. There’s a whole ethos of world-disgust.

 

Hatred’s preparatory. It’s a making way.

For what?

For love – don’t you see?

 

They’ll send their secret police. They’ll open the new concentration camps. They’ll beat us. Extract confessions. They’ll beat us. They’ll humiliate us, publically. They’ll inject their filth into us. They’ll pollute our bloodstreams. They’ll alter us. They’ll fuck with our genomes. Nothing will be enough for them but transhumanism. They’ll want us to be part of their new species.

 

They’re building underground bunkers – why? They’re spending billions to live underground. Why? What do they know what’s coming?

 

Why are they allowed to get away with this? Why are they permitted these grandiose plans? Their demonism?

Where’s the counter-force? Where’s the corrective? Where’s the evidence of God?

 

It’s their madness we’re infected with. It’s their madness that has sent the world mad.

And does it infect us, their madness? Has it touched us, too? Have we gone weird, gone mad?

 

New twists on demonism. New horrors. New perversions. New twistings. New tortures.

 

The nihilized world. The finished world.

 

The deepest nihilistic fall of the world.

 

It is necessary to hate the world.

 

An antichrist move – that’s what this is. It has all the fucking signs.

 

How much longer do we have to live?

Is this living? Does this count?

 

We got lost. On the way to where? Where were we supposed to be going?

 

We’ve stumbled across it. We found it.

Found what? The secret. The missing … link. The missing piece. What we forgot. What we forgot we forgot. And that we’ve found again.

 

We’re quotations. On the lips of God. No, on the lips of ‘God’. We quote. We repeat. We say it again – all the old stuff. All the archaic stuff.

 

Does the horror know itself as horror? Does it feel its own horror? Is it innocent, in its horrifyingness?

 

The urgency of the lack of urgency. The emergency of the non-emergency. The evil of the lack of obvious evil. The apocalypse of the non-apocalypse. This is how they’ll fool us. By making it appear so normal.

 

The cancer of the universe.

 

They’ve poisoned the sky. They’ve poisoned the air. They’ve poisoned the earth.

 

I’ve noticed a change in the quality of my despair.

Have you?

In its flavour. It’s not the same as it was.