Work in Progress

This is the philosophy of our times! We’re the philosophers our time deserves!

 

Only at the edges of Europe can European thought re-emerge. Only at its lunatic fringes. Only through our stupidity. By our stupidity. Wielding our stupidity.

We’ve only ever needed the courage of our stupidity. We’ve only even needed to be unleashed into our stupidity. To soar into it.

 

The cryptophilosophy beneath our philosophy. The cryptotheology under our cryptophilosophy. Nearly hidden by it.

Our hidden significance, which is completely different from our actual significance. You have to know how to read us. How to interpret us. It’s all there.

 

The theology working inside of us. The theology that uses us as its vessels.

 

The last theology. That doesn’t even present itself as theology. That doesn’t look like theology. But that is nevertheless theology. That is nothing but theology.

How much longer do we have to live? What’s the right age to gracefully bow out? When will we have done our time? Hasn’t been too long, already? Haven’t we taken it too far? Haven’t we missed the perfect age to finish ourselves off? Perhaps that’s our guilt: that we missed the obvious point. That we didn’t take the turn. Didn’t act. Didn’t do it then, when we should have done. We missed out … And survived …

We missed the moment. When was it? When was it time to … When should we have done it? Oh but it’s too late now. It’d be grotesque now. Even more grotesque than just living on, or whatever we’re doing.

We’re living on. We’re allowing ourselves to live on. That old life instinct. So misplaced. So … redundant …

Our just-going-on. Our tastelessness. It really shouldn’t be allowed. And nor should we allowed.

What’s our excuse? For not just … taking our lives. Right here! Right now! Just throwing ourselves in the North Sea. There it is: the whole North Sea. We could just walk out on Tynemouth Peer or Southern Pier and throw ourselves off. No, not even throw ourselves off – too histrionic. Just let ourselves slip into the ocean. Just gently lower ourselves in.

Fixing the anomaly, but gently, quietly. Mending the tear in the universe, without making a fuss. Death! Just death! Why don’t we do it? Why not, right now? Just throw ourselves off the ferry, when no one was looking. Without making a fuss … Just drown ourselves there, where the Tyne is at its broadest.

Correct the error. Negate the negation.

Our coast suicides. Our Tynemouth suicides. Our Whitley Bay suicides. Our Cullercoats suicides. Our South Shields suicides. Our North Shields suicides. Which is it to be? Will we die on Long Sands. In King Edward’s Bay. On Whitley sands? Will we throw ourselves from St Mary’s Lighthouse?

 

Our posthumousness. Our going on. Our continuation. Our deepening grotesquerie. Our deepening of the grotesquerie of the universe. That we’re still here is an embarrassment, First of all to us. To everyone! For everyone! That we’re still here … That we’re still alive … That we remain … How is that possible? Still going on. still alive. A bad joke! My God!

We missed the chance! And here we are! Here we still are! We missed our divinely appointed moment to die. When we’d reached our highest, our best. When we were at our highest, our best. When we weren’t as we are now: entirely fallen beings. Entire failures. My God. There was a purity to us then. We weren’t nothings, then. We weren’t entirely dead, then.

If we were to shoot ourselves now. If we could get hold of a gun and blast ourselves in the face … It’d be … inappropriate. We would have missed our chance. Missed our appointment.

And now – what’s left to us? The disaster happened. We did not die. Hunter Graccushes of Long Sands. We’re wandering Jews. And now it’s no longer the time to die … not anymore.

We ride the Metro instead. We buy Metro Day Saver passes instead. We go Metro roving instead. We make Metro journeys. Metro trips out to the coast. Metro trips hither and yon.

We ride the Metro network instead. We look at out at the sea from the train carriage, instead. So we look at out at the river Tyne from 100 foot viaducts instead. We count off the Metro stations instead.

It’s all about nature perpetuating itself. Like we need more nature. Like we need more life … I’m sick of life …

We’re like some sick bubbling. Festering. Like a giant compost heap. Sprouting toadstools, or whatever.

We’re some dreadful growth. Some infestation of the earth. Some scum … Some disgusting multiplication …

 

Why can’t we accept we’re just being fooled … by our own bodies. That we’re liars. That we’ve been lying all our lives. That our lives are lies.

Biology’s fooled us. We’re … gene perpetuationmaking machines, that’s all. That’s what it’s all about. God … It’s humiliating. And we invented God and Meaning so we wouldn’t feel so humiliated …

Evolution’s humiliated us … Nature’s humiliated us …

 

Nature’s a joke – a cosmic joke. Something that went unchecked. That was allowed to be. To sprawl. To take over a planet. And then … become self-conscious enough to know its own disgustingness. To know itself as joke. To see it in the mirror. As sheer, laughing futility. As sheer laughter at itself.

 

Hatred of ourselves as natural. Revulsion of ourselves as part of nature, that’s all that can justify us. To say we weren’t fooled. To say that we can’t be consoled by the lie of the body.

 

Our self-disgust. Our instinctive horror at everything.

 

And we’re supposed to think it’s a gift – all of life. That it was given to us. That we should be grateful for living. That to live at all is miracle enough.

 

And killing ourselves would be disgusting too. What a mess. What a disgusting mess. It would pile disgust on top of disgust …

 

We’re, like, the universe soiling itself.

 

This nihilism. I’m choking on nihilism.

 

This is where my godlessness has led me … God stops the infinite regress … The dreadful spiralling into NOTHING. Into NOWHERE. These thoughts of thoughts of thoughts. This ceaseless … melodrama.

 

Apes realising that they’re apes. The disgusting discovering that they’re disgusting. That they’re fucked in the head. That they never had a chance. That they were always fooled. That they fooled themselves. Their hormonal systems … Their endocrinal systems … Every bone in their bodies – in our bodies. Every cell, craving … what? … to make more of itself …

 

It’s going faster, our decline. It’s increasing. This acceleration into nowhere. It’s becoming more complex. We’re making more of a mess.

 

There’s no end to this experiment. No limit. We experiment on ourselves. The experiment experiments. For no purpose. Without reason. Just because … there’s nothing better to do, in a universe of lies.

 

In a universe that just lies. In a universe that just mocks itself. For, like, an audience of NO ONE. For empty skies. For the absent fucking divinity. For the great NOTHING. The great FUCK ALL. The great GO FUCK YOURSELVES.

 

Mockery, echoing out into NOWHERE. In which we laugh at ourselves laughing at ourselves. Mirrors reflecting themselves into the INFINITE NOTHING.

 

What do we want? What do we WANT?

An end to this. An end to … being fooled. Just some great full stop. The fucking  apocalypse. Just to set a limit.

It needs to be rounded off. It needs to be completed. A stop to the spasming. To the screaming and the laughing and the noise.

Silence – wouldn’t that be perfect? Responding to the silence that is the universe. Echoing the great silence, the great darkness. Echoing the NOTHING.

That’s we can do: show the nothingness in all things, the futility of all endeavours. The great pointlessness. The great randomness.

 

Why does there have to be MORE? More mockery. More farce. More of this. More of you and I. More pseudo philosophy. More pretend philosophy.

More gasping. More crying upwards. More living death. More death alive. More the usual usual. More mornings, more afternoons, more evenings. More weeks and months. My God.

Accelerating into futility. Nothing-ing forever.

 

All this … discourse. This talk for nothing, about nothing, in nothing. Which means nothing. That’s just nothingness talking. That’s nihilism’s speech, nihilism’s echoing. Against the walls. Against the ceiling.

 

Here to sound an alarm. To make it heard. To let it resound.

The scream that screams NOTHING. Not even a cry for help. Not even a protest.

 

Here we are, stupidity’s flower, mediocrity’s bloom. Offering our stupidity to the night. To the sky.

To the … chemtrails, anyway. To the aluminium in the air. To the barium that’s falling over everything. To the caesium in our cigarettes …

 

The destroyers are at work – of course they are. Do they think they’re doing it for our good? Do they give themselves that alibi? Do they try to deceive themselves about their motives? Or have they left that behind?

Is it pure venality. Pure evil. Evil, multiplying. Through some kind of enthusiasm. Or obsession. Or compulsion. To see where it will take the. To see where it will lead. To see what they can do. Evil’s, like, self-propelling.

Have they sold their souls? Did they ever have souls?

 

There’s so much I have to say. I could just spew and spew.

 

So much evil and so much horror. Running through us. Coursing through us.

We’re filth. We see filth and are filth. We breathe filth. It’s swill, it’s all swill. Running through everything. The universe is made of swill. World-swill. Foaming fucking swill.

 

The death drive … what happened to that? Everything seems so indecently alive. God. Shamelessly alive … Burgeoningly alive … Just continuing. Spreading. Multiplying itself. Endlessly. Unabashed. With nothing to give it pause. Nothing that makes it hesitate. Question.

 

This is a place where I can … talk. Where I can … say anything. It’s like I’m being channelled by the self-disgust of the universe. Like my self-disgust is the universe’s self-disgust. And vice versa.

That’s a lot of disgust.

 

See, we’re peculiarly well placed to understand the universe’s self-disgust. Given that we’re full of disgust. Full of horror. Given that we hate ourselves … It’s a good start to understand the self-hatred of Everything. Of life, anyway.

 

Because we let it resound through us. Because it sings through us. It finds, in us, a vehicle. It finds a way to speak. Because of us. Because of who we are.

It can give voice to itself. Consider itself. Contemplate itself. Be itself. Enjoy itself. Its peculiar way of being. In us, as us, because of us. Nothing other than us. We ourselves …

 

This is who we are: the doom speakers. Destroyed universe speakers. Degeneration speakers. We’re voicers of disgust’s disgust. Of horror’s horror. We let horror be fluent in horror. Speak of nothing other than horror.

 

We never asked for this. We never wanted this … elevation. This election. Or is it a degradation …?

That our self disgust would join the greater self-disgust. That our self horror would join the horror-at-itself of the universe.

 

Have we actually reached peak disgusting?

 

The same general hovering pissedness. The same general intoxication. The same stupefaction. Of the good kind? Of the bad kind?

As drunk as we usually get. As … wandering. As … self destructive. And why shouldn’t we be?

All the good energies we’ve turned on ourselves. We’re busying torturing ourselves. Vivisecting ourselves. We’re busy with autohorror. With self-disgust. We’re appalled! Of course we are! With ourselves – who else?

All this beer and what for? All this whiskey and what for? Where is it leading? Nowhere! Of course! As usual! Never anywhere, as usual!

 

Our self-hatred, part of the self-hatred of the world. Our self-ruination, part of the self-ruination of the world.

 

We haven’t yet risen to our heights, which is to say our depths. We haven’t found ourselves, which is to say lost ourselves. We aren’t yet ruined. Not totally.

 

We need an Interpreter. A Commentator. To show us our true Significance. The Significance of our insignificance. The Importance of our non-importance.

 

An ardency for what? An intensity, for what? A sense of mission, but for what?

What is all this for?

 

In everything we do or say, the same message: stop us. Stop us now.

In everything we do or say: Prevent us from doing this. Stop us from doing this. We don’t want to do this. Don’t let us go on.

In everything we do or say: Take us down. Rugby-tackle us. That we were allowed to get this far was already a scandal. But that we’re allowed to go further?

In everything we do or say: Pull the emergency break. Press the emergency stop. Assassinate us. Sniper-bullet us. Put us down.

 

We’ve been produced by the madness of the world. We’re what happens when the world’s gone crazy.

 

Nothing ever seems to resolve. There’s some gathering crisis, but it just keeps gathering. The storm never breaks.

If only there was something we could do to hasten it. To bring it closer.

Why – why do you want the end?

Because it would put an end to a phase. Because something might begin again.

And wouldn’t you like for things to begin again?

Because it would put an end to us. With all our longing. All our aching.

Not me – I don’t long. I don’t ache.

Look what we’ve reduced love to. This. Some … cuckoldry. Some affair.

 

What’s it supposed to Mean, philosopher? Does it mean anything at all? It just holds off the boredom, doesn’t it? It’s just some … novelty. A bit of time-off for you. A little holiday from working on the magnum opus.

And for me? What is it for me? I’m greedy, I admit that. I wanted it. I drove it. I started it. And you were just … passive. I think I wanted to disgust myself. I think I wanted to appal myself. Drive myself into some … debasement. Because I am debased. And you’re debased. And what’s worse is that we don’t mind being debased.

 

What we’re doing to him, my … husband. The way we’re humiliating him. And ourselves – what we’re doing to ourselves!

So greedy. So impulsive. Such animals. God, that should sound erotic, shouldn’t it. Fucking like animals. Thrusting and pumping. But doesn’t it just sound … tawdry. And disgusting. We’re disgusting.

Sin – we live in sin. That’s the only word for it: sin. We’ve sinned against who we should be. Against the Holy Ghost, or whatever. Is that what it’s called: the Holy Ghost?

 

It wouldn’t have happened if I was writing a magnum opus, like you. If I had something else going on … Children to look after, or whatever. But you know what? I don’t even believe that. I would have wanted it anyway, our affair. An affair. Any old affair. I would have wanted the experience. As a kind of self-debasement. That’s what this is, I think: self-debasement.

I want to humiliate myself. I seek out degradation. I wanted to turn myself into a … supervillain. I want the drama of feeling.

Do I really feel guilty? I feel the ghost of feeling guilty, that’s all. I feel that I’m supposed to feel guilty, even if I don’t feel guilty.

 

I’m searching for it, my guilt. I’m looking for it but not finding it, my sense of guilt. Some last shred of decency. Perhaps I’m a decent person after all. No – that’s going too far. Semi-decent. Not entirely indecent. Ha!

I think I wanted a bit of drama. I think all this is about drama. I wanted something to happen. I wanted to be caught up in some imbroglio. Is that the word for it: imbroglio?

 

And don’t think you’re innocent in all this. What do you think you’re doing to my husband? What do you think you’re putting him through?

He’s your husband.

You shook his hand.

I did shake his hand.

All this is your fault, too. You’re part of it.

 

We’re mockers. Despoilers. Isn’t it enjoyable: loathing ourselves? Aren’t we indulging in it: self-hatred? Just as a way of entertaining ourselves.

Twisting the knife. Turning it deeper. On ourselves. Just for the drama …

Do we really feel it? That we’re doing anything wrong? That we’re at fault. Just for the novelty.

What are we living out – what psychodrama? Where’s this supposed to be taking us? Hell, probably. Somewhere dreadful. But it won’t, will it? We don’t really feel that. We don’t fear that. This isn’t the fucking middle ages.

It’ll leave us exactly where we are: here, right here. It probably isn’t good for our souls, though. Do we have souls? Do philosophers think we have souls anymore? What’s the latest theory? … I think I have a soul. What are we without souls? Who’s stolen them, our souls? Where have they disappeared to?

 

Our variations on self-loathing. But we don’t even loathe ourselves, that’s the thing. We have the sense that we should do, but we don’t. We’re shameless – deeply shameless. There’s a gaping hole where our moral life should be.

Unless not loathing ourselves is what we loathe. We know what we ought to be. We know we ought to be appalled – simply appalled at ourselves. But we’re not. We don’t care, in the end. None of this means anything, in the end.

Love is all that’s left, right? Or our tawdry affair …

Love – is this love? The mockery of love … A kind of parasite upon love. Are we serving the forces of good or the forces of evil, do you think?

 

Love: that’s what’s been thrown to us. That’s what we think of as freedom now that everything else has been essentially shut down.

Love: that’s the sop. That’s the bone on which we’re supposed to gnaw …

 

Life out there is meaningless – we know that. So we take refuge in private life. In romance. In affairs. As if that was where the true life was …

Romance is the only thing left. And philosophy … Philosophy!

Laughter.

 

What’s missing from the world that we find here, between us? Everything. Everything’s missing in the world. That’s the answer. So is that we find here: everything?

 

Love. This is how we’re exercising our freedom in the new police state. Love … this is where we’re supposed to find fulfilment – the last fulfilment.

But we’re too tainted by the world out there. We’re too corrupt. Too visionless. Don’t know think we’re visionless, philosopher?

 

Love’s still allowed us. For the moment. It hasn’t yet been declared a crime.

Love … we’re free to love. And that’s about all. We’re free for affairs … for tawdriness. To thrust and pump and then to lie in a disgusting heap …

 

Public life is meaningless – we know that. Public life is shit. The world out there is shit. So we take refuge in private life. In romance. In affairs. That’s where we think the true life is. Love is all that’s left …

 

We want to share secrets. Truths about ourselves. We want not to lie. Because we can say nothing true about ourselves out there. This is where all the truth is to be found. Are you speaking truths, philosopher? Am I?

Laughter.

 

Seeking salvation in intimacy … in love … Because this is the only thing that feels real. We want to be ourselves. Ha! We want to be what’s leftover after the world. Only there’s nothing leftover. We’re part of the world.

We’re soft robots, to them. Soft machines.

 

It’s a war on God. On the Creation.

 

They’ve loaded us up with nanotech.

 

Face it, we’re chattels of the Man.

 

They’re tagging us, tracking us, coding us, rating us, measuring us, restricting us, manipulating us.

 

They’re beaming the new reality directly into our heads.

 

Lucifer orchestrates everything – we know that. Revelations laid it out. The four horsemen are marching across the world stage. Satanism is moving into the fucking open.

 

Extermination – that’s their game. Genocide.

 

The overthrow of everything we’ve ever known.

 

This is the great tribulation. We’re an extinct species – already.

 

We’re in the time of the fulfilment of scripture.

 

Everything’s in motion. Everything’s in play. It’s all happening.

 

People are just going to commit suicide en masse. When they realise.  

 

We stagger through their world. We careen through their world. Through their streets. Through their shops. We navigate their websites.

 

What do we have that others do not? We see. We have eyes to see. We hear. We have ears to hear.

 

It’s a zombie world. Their world.

We live in their reality. Their delusion. Their inverted universe.

 

We go to their meetings. We do their jobs. We read their books. Watch their TV. Walk through their corridors. Eat their food. Drink their water. Breathe their air.

 

Under their skies. The chem trail skies.

 

With their spyware in our bodies. Their biosensors in our bodies. Their backdoors into our minds.

 

Undergoing their lobotomies. Their neurodegenerative stuff.

 

Breathing in their strontium. Their barium. Their aluminium. Their manganese. Their polymer fibres

 

Their war on creation. Their electroceuticals. Their parasitical machines within us.

 

Their robot morality. Their technofascist bullshit.

 

Our controllers. Our harvesters. Our dominators.

 

Who’s really in charge of the world? What’s really going on? It’s head spinning. It’s confusing.

The WEF? The Davos crowd? The central banks? Is there a FED fightback? A commercial bank fight back?

 

It’s going on around us. They’re reshaping reality.

 

They’re accelerating agendas. Bringing things forward.

 

It’s all happening at once. It’s, like, a thousand apocalypses now …

 

There’s some vast war … a battle between the giants in the clouds … and we don’t understand any of it.

 

It’s all happening above our heads. The real battle. The real war for civilisation.

 

There’s a battle in the clouds. The giants are at war, and we’re trying to understand the war.

 

Vast events. Sublime events. Coasting trillions of dollars. Who are the agents? Who are the players? What do they want from it all?

 

We want to understand the agendas. The players. All the secret operations.

 

The rulers of the world … are fighting amongst themselves. Struggling with each other.

 

The war’s being fought over our heads. And what will happen to us?

 

A bland evil. A technocratic evil. Bureaucratic. That operates through middle management.

 

They’re materialists. They’re physicalists. They have no comprehension of the heart. They think everything is reducible to matter, to base things.

 

Something saves us. Our anti-authoritarianism. Our limitless suspicion. Our ultra-sensitivity to condescension. We have instincts. We’re not totally bereft. There are resources we can draw upon.

 

They’re Satanists. Child traffickers, too, probably. Adrenochrome harvesters.

 

They’re fucking with the genome. Turning us into Frankenhumans.

 

They don’t just want to own us, they want us to be evil like them. They want to take us to hell, like them.

This world is demonic. This system. And they want to make us demonic, too.

 

The world as farm, as zoo, as lab. As a giant rat cage for the tech science elite to experiment.

To transition us from a carbon based to a silicon based life form. The enforced next stage of evolution. To integrate us into the global brain system. Into a mind-controlled population under the superstate.

 

The control of all life – the control of biology.

 

They’re building a technological body for the Evil One. To the Antichrist that is fully machine, fully human. To an AI god we will worship.

 

The System. The grid. Their dream since Babylon, basically.

 

Evil wants to propagate evil. Evil wants there to be more evil.

 

The contagion’s spreading from human to fucking human like some zombie movie.

 

Look at all these fuckers, going along with it.

Going along with what? We don’t even know what it is.

 

Look at them all. They’re making the shift. They’ve made the adjustment. It’s beautiful, in a way.

Like a flock of birds making a sudden shift. A shoal of fish. Suddenly, suddenly, turning in a new direction. As if all at once.

 

Who set the trap. Who devised it?

 

It all works together for the Bad. It all works together for the Man. For Satan. For demonic evil.

 

Great wheels rolling over us. Great wheels, crushing us. Driving over us. Incomprehensible pain. 

It’s noon. We can drink at noon, can’t we?

 

There’s nothing in our lives.

 

Do you think we’re a good influence on each other?

 

Are we depressive?

I think we’re slowly sinking into depression.

I think depressing is rising up to meet us. Claim us. I think we’ll drown in it. I think our lungs will fill with it.

 

I don’t even want to be an alcoholic. I don’t even think I like alcohol.

 

The world is disgusting.

We know that.

More than usually disgusting.

Maybe so.

 

Trying to find the exact point between drink and sober. And staying that way.

 

We’re not not alcoholics.

 

We can’t actually afford to drink.

Let’s drink to forget that.

 

Let’s really ruin our lives. We can’t even do that.

 

Do one of your dances. Musical movement’s very important.

 

I think I’m fundamentally a low level drunk.

 

I’ve made the deliberate decision to drink myself to death. Starting now.

 

This is the prime of our lives! This is us at our potential best!

 

Where everybody knows you name. And hates it.

 

We’re over-educated and under … what?

Sexed.

 

These are my people. Conspiracy people.

 

I’ve lost my sense of humour.

 

Drink and just crash. Drink until I pass out.

 

We’re disgusting. God hates us.

 

Your dancing. I love your dancing.

 

Put some disco on. I want to hear disco. DISCO, Godammit!

 

Play some classical music. I wanna hear some harp. I wanna hear some fucking Mozart.

 

Put something on we can dance to.

 

Drunk by lunchtime. The day stretching ahead.

 

I love brown light. I don’t want to go out into daylight … I hate daylight … I come in here to escape the daylight.

 

This is our life. My God!

This is our death. This Is who we are. This is our apocalypse.

 

Smoke with pride. Smoke bravely. Don’t feel guilt. Don’t let it depress you.

 

We’re the last drunkards. They aren’t going to allow our kind anymore.

 

We need people in the world’s night. We need friends.

 

Do you know what friendship is? Everyone doing shots together. Even the barman.

 

You’re an asshole. But you’re my asshole.

I’ve always wanted to be your asshole.

 

Afternoon drinking. It makes such sense.

 

X taking his trousers off. I like being in a pub that let you do that.

 

X and Y, singing a duet.

 

Am I losing my magnificent torso, do you think?

 

What does your tat read?

 

Playing Roy Orbison’s Crying. We’re all crying.

 

Pub wisdom. I’m writing all this shit down.

 

This is my barstool. This is where I sit. No one else could sit here.

 

I’m fucked up. I love being fucked up. I’ll always get fucked up. My life is getting fucked up.

 

X is taking all his clothes off again.

 

How much drinking are we going to do?

 

Every time we meet, it’s some kind of triumph over necessity.

 

No one listens to us.

 

This is the truest I’ve ever been. This is my place.

 

We’re the people the fuckers want to destroy. To depopulate.

 

See, we care about each other. Even as no one else cares about us.

 

He’s in love with everyone. With a lot of people.

 

This is the most beautiful place in the world.

 

I’ve got to sort myself out. I’ve got to write things.

 

This is the best night of my life, like every night here.

 

Tucking X up to sleep on a sofa.

 

What is this song – it’s so fucking beautiful.

 

This is better than any church.

 

Religion – that’s what I’m thinking about. A beautiful fucking religious drunkenness. Where it means the fucking world.

 

You just fell asleep. You can’t sleep here.

 

I’m 32, look like I’m 50.

 

You’ve got to stop drinking here. Can’t come here every night. Take it from me. Like, what do you actually do? Who are you?

I just come to the bar.

I’ll tell you who you’ll be: a guy who used to do stuff who doesn’t do stuff anymore, because he’s in the pub. Promise me you won’t be that guy.

 

We’re going to die in prison. That’s the only outcome. They’re going to get rid of the likes of us. And pubs. Pubs won’t survive. The kind of places people come to actually talk.

 

A man crying and crying on the sofa.

 

What’s the religious meaning of our drunkenness?

We’re here to bring ourselves back from the dead. Here to make ourselves feel alive through chemical means.

 

We’re here to bring ourselves back from the brink or take ourselves to the brink, one of the two.

 

Drink is the question. Drink is the answer. Both at once.

 

Drinking makes me feel witty.

You’ve never been witty, only puerile.

 

Remember who you are.

Who am I?

A child of shit. A creature of the ruins. The last kind, the most revolting kind. Some kind of human worm. Or slug.

 

Let’s drink to that. Let’s drink to everything. I’m feeling very expansive, with my drinking.

Let’s drink for every living being on this planet. Every sentience. And the rocks, too, if you believe in panpsychism.

To hope that everyone can be drunk. That we all participate in world-drunkenness. In world reeling. In world ecstasy.

 

Drink is the answer, probably. Or is it the question?

Stop being so clever. I despise clever.

 

Our heads are expanding. The world’s expanding. We’re in expansive mode. We’re in world liberation mode. We’re in taking our heads off mode.

 

Let’s never be sober again!

 

He’s dying of, like, penile cancer. She’s dying of vaginal cancer. Can you die of that? Cancer of the cock? Cancer of the cunt?

 

The night, cresting. The night, roaring around us.

 

Happy drunks. Everyone drinking, and involved each other’s drinking. Everyone up. Everyone happy. And supportive of each other’s drinking. Nurturing each other’s drinking.

<Back here after finishing edits of My Weil. Going through old notebooks – nothing new for the time being.>

This is some indulgent existence. Who has the right to live like this? We do, apparently.

We’re luxuriants. We’re self-indulgers. We’re emptying the chocolate box of life.

Surely all this is bad for us. Surely it’s ruining us in some way or another. We’re going to be punished, I know it. You don’t get a free pass for this. You can’t just live like this. You can’t just abandon everything. There are consequences, I’m sure of it.

It must be doing something to our souls. Do we have souls? You tell me, philosopher. You’re the expert.

 

How come we deserve this? Why can it be our thing? This isn’t a normal life. We shouldn’t be living like this, so carelessly. Like we don’t care about anything.

 

This deception. How come I believe I deserve this? That I should get away with it? Am I just greedy? Probably.

 

It’s not like I have an excuse. I wasn’t brought up really savagely. There was no major trauma in my life. I wasn’t, like, abused or anything.

 

What sort of person am I? The sort of person who doesn’t care what sort of person I am – that’s clear. Who doesn’t have a conscience. No, who doesn’t act on her conscience.

 

I’m not even mean. I’m not even calculating. I just helped yourself to this. I wanted an affair, and I got to have an affair and that was it. Simple. No qualms. No inner objections. No wrackings of conscience. No anxiety. No: who am I if I do this? No: what kind of person does these things? No: who am I becoming?

 

I must be … two dimensional or something. I must have no depth. No soul.

 

What if we actually lived together? What if we actually got married? What would we do then?

You’d have to find a lover.

And so would you.

 

This is some indulgent existence. Who has the right to live like this?

We do, apparently. We do.

Why? How come we deserve this?

Because we alone could appreciate it for what it is.

What is it, philosopher?

 

We are pleasing ourselves, aren’t we? I’m pleasing you, aren’t I? I'm pleasing me at least.

 

Love … makes you feel exalted, doesn’t it? It makes you high. It makes you feel like some secret aristocrat. If only the world felt what we felt: that’s what you think.  It makes you smug.

 

All the world loves lovers. And lovers are always in love with themselves. With their love. With their being in love. It’s a recipe for smugness.

 

Do you think we look like we’re in love? Do we charm people? Do we lovebirds remind them of the possibility of romance?

It’s like we’re elevated above everything. Like this is the most important thing in the world. Do you feel it, too? Are we in love, in love, in love?

 

There’s an absolute divide between us, and them. Because we’re in love. We’re, like, a loving elite. Who feel their love more intensely than anyone else. Who live more intensely.

 

We’re despisers. We despise all those who live lower than our love.

I think I despise us.

 

Us against the world. The world against us. That's how it is. 

 

Lovers staring at each other. Pleased with themselves. With their love. Pleased with themselves in love.

 

I want to thank nature personally. Thanks, nature. Thanks hormones. Thanks, desire. Thanks, lust.

 

We’re exalted. We’ve exalted ourselves. Lifted ourselves out of the common run.

 

Even I think I look pretty good. I’m peaking, right? This is as good as it’s going to get. It’s all decline from here. God!

And what then, will you just stick with your husband forever?

Maybe I’ll have to.

 

I’m at my peak and believe I deserve something.

Because of your beauty.

Sure, because of my supposed beauty.

 

You’re getting hotter. You’re peaking. This might be the height of your beauty.

And why do you deserve my so-called beauty, philosopher? Why do you get to have it? You tell me …

Because I appreciate it. Because I’m a connoisseur.

The connoisseur of me. I like that idea.

 

God, it’s all very animal, isn’t it? It’s all very … primitive.

 

You’re insatiable. You want too much.

You made me insatiable. You’re the cause.

 

This is like a holiday romance. It’s like we’re on holiday, and it won’t last once the spell is broken. Once we have to go back to reality.

 

This is our sentimental education. Do you realise that?

What are we supposed to be learning? What’s the curriculum?

 

Maybe there’s no such thing as Love capital L. All of this is a way to cover up the void. The void of our lives. The void of everything.