Work in Progress

Each in our own way, orbiting the planet of despair. Each of us, reading our own philosophers. Making our own way through their oeuvres.

We write things – sure we write things. We publish things – that do not matter. That are accepted by journals. That are read by no one.

 

We came to our Conclusions early on. We knew. We were Certain. We’d already learnt the essential Lesson.

 

We were allowed to survive. We were passed over. Did they not see us? Not notice us? Were we too small to notice? Did they plan this?

 

Survivor’s guilt because we made it into academic jobs, why others didn’t. Others more worthy than we are. More deserving.

Who couldn’t get it together, like we could (could we really get it together?) Who couldn’t organise themselves to publish, to market themselves, to press the flesh at conferences. People with integrity, unlike us. People with standards. Of ethics – high ethics. Who were too good for this wretched world (we were never too good for this wretched world …)

 

Why us? Did we want it more? We’re we more desperate? Did we have the look of people who’d do anything – anything – to get a job? Who would put up with anything? Who were just saps?

They saw in us what we were looking for. Useful idiots. Desperate types. No morals. No standards. No integrity. They saw they could turn us into whatever they wanted.

 

There was a weakness in us. We couldn’t hide it. We had that look about us. Desperation. General patheticness. We’re yea-sayers. We’d agree to anything. We’d just go along with things. No fucking resistance.

Wanting only a safe harbour. Wanting only to keep our heads down for a few years. To shut the door and read and write and teach. Imagine it: teach! 

 

After all the whoring for work! After all the prostituting ourselves for work! We wanted simply – to work!

 

Was it by chance that we – we – got a job. Were we just lucky to find ourselves here? Was it merit? Was it philosophical ability? Did we think we simply hadn’t been found out? That we’d slipped through the net? Past the gatekeepers? That it was just some fake – some chance?

No – they saw, our employers – that we were perfectly suited to what was required. That we were exactly what they were looking for.

 

It wasn’t by chance. It wasn’t a fluke. It wasn’t just luck. Their guard wasn’t just down for the moment. We hadn’t slipped past the guards. No – we’re here for a reason. They gave us – us – a job. We no ones. We randomers. We wanderers-in from the street …

 

They know we’d just get down to so-called work: doing what we’re supposed to. Working around the clock. Weekends. Pleased to be off the streets. To be anything vaguely academic.

Busying ourselves with their lie, and the perpetuation of their lie. Putting ourselves under their cosh. Whipping our own backs.

 

We were absurdly grateful. Absurdly flattered that we were to be ‘lecturers’. Flattered that we were to profess. To teach.

 

And the students. The ones that were put before us. That we were to teach – to lecture. (Laughter.) Expounding the thoughts of thinkers much greater than we were. To present their views. To assess them. To pass on the tradition.

To be representatives of the European tradition, in our way. (More laughter.) An honour! To carry it forward – continental philosophy, and in the UK. We’ll carry the European torch (still more laughter). As though it had been left to us …

Some last energy. Some sickness of despair.

It doesn’t just sink down. It has some … life to it. Grotesque life. Twisted life. There’s an energy to ruination.

 

A drama to despair. An ‘and more’ …

 

We demand the meaning of meaning. We shake the bars of this world – that’s what we do. Cry out. It makes prison no longer seem so bad.

 

We’re making a last stand for meaning. We’re demanding meaning from the world. We’re not just accepting our fate. We’re not taking this lying down.

 

Revalution: that’s what we crave. But a revelation of nothing, for nothing. A purposeless revelation. The great blank. That means nothing. Commands nothing.

 

We want to know what no one wants to know. We want to feel the full indifference of the world. Let there be NOTHING. Let us be NOTHING, too.

 

We’ll make our protest. Our lives as protest. We didn’t take all this lying down. We didn’t just go along with it all. We weren’t duped.

 

All our zest: despairing zest. All our vim: morose vim. All our exhilaration: depressed exhilaration. The manic spike of the manic depressive. Don’t forget: where there’s an up, there’s a down. Where there’s a further down, there’s a whirlpool of down.

News: they’re moving philosophy to chemical engineering.

General shock. Can they do this sort of thing? Without consultation? Is it allowed?

Apparently.

Puzzlement: who’s behind it? Whose idea has this? The dean of the sciences? The dean of arts? The uni president himself?

I sense the hand of Antichrist.

You always think it’s the Antichrist.

That’s because it usually is the Antichrist.

So what do we do about it?

Nothing. Once the Antichrist’s involved, it’s a fait accompli. It’s like the apocalypse. You can’t do anything about it – it just comes.

Wow. Is there a rationale for the move? Have they explained themselves?

They don’t have to explain themselves. They just act.

It makes no sense …

Of course it makes no sense. That’s the point …

It’s mockery – in plain view. They’re laughing at us. It’s a deliberate humiliation.

Is it only us they’re moving? Are they going to join up English and mech eng?

Only us.

That’s cruel … singling us out, because they know we’re weak … There’s only three of us, for fuck's sake.

They’re trying to trap us. To make us resign … To lower our morale … To decrease our recruitment. They know we can’t last …

Those bastards!

 

This never would have happened in the old days.

In the old days, we’d never have got jobs. Not at this kind of uni.

True.

Look, It’s just some random thing. Some stupidity. Some manager or another wanted to make their stamp on the uni. Some idiot …

… They’re all idiots.

Philosophy … chemical engineering. Someone’s done it as a joke. It’s a joke told to someone else. Someone’s laughing …

No one’s laughing. The horror is that they mean it.

What are the chemical engineering types like? What do they want from us? What’s in it for them?

Our student numbers, maybe. 

Our reputation.

Laughter.

Fuck … this is insane.

It’s all insane. The world’s insane.

Cicero, lying on the floor of dread. So what’s our plan?

There are no plans. Only surrender.

Bloodless life. Pulseless life. Suffocating horror and pain.

All bearing’s lost. All things dark.

Drained of feeling. Thought morbid, confused. Stuperous.

Restless nights. Cold undercurrents. No window of hope.

Confusion. Disorientation. Agitation in despair.

 

Revulsion – towards everything.

 

Exhaustion. Cold brained.

 

No resistance to the disgust. No longer stirring up the disgust.

 

Four walls constantly closing in.

 

We’ve outlived the end of the world, that’s the thing.

 

The world’s outlived us, that’s the thing.

 

Is it time to kill ourselves yet?

 

It’s always too late to kill ourselves. We’ve been alive too long.

 

Everything is empty, everything is past. All our wells are dried up, even the sea has receded. The earth wants to break open, but the depths will not devour us! Alas, where is there still a sea in which one could drown …

Ah, good ol’ self-loathing.

But it isn’t really self-loathing. It’s the loathing of everything, me included.

Especially you?

And you – I hate you, too.

Well, I hate you, too.

 

A simple life, that’s what I’d like. Simplicity.

But we’re too complicated to be simple. Too … twisted.

Brain damage, that’s the answer.

Brain undamage,  you mean. Maybe some … trepanning.

 

Is there a good reason not to drink? Is there a good reason not to start drinking now? Is there a good reason not to drink ourselves to death?

 

This is a way to muffle the mind. To stop the thoughts. To turn them into void thoughts. Into thoughts the void would think.

Oh, not the void. Don’t talk about the void. He always talks about the void when he drinks.

Because drinking is the path to the fucking void.

 

Drinking. That’s when you come closest to the void. When you stop struggling. Stop thrashing about. Stop resisting. And you can let the void carry you away.

Is that what you want?

 

I want to drink myself into the void. I want to think the void’s drunken thoughts. I want to speak fluent void.

 

We’ve gone very far up this road.

Too far?

See we can only hang out with people exactly like us. Which would be a problem if we didn’t have each other.

We bring it out in each other.

We recognise it in each other. We’re fellow nihilists. Fellow hollowed out. Fellow knowers of the void. Fellow void lovers.

Is that what we are: void lovers?

 

The void: that’s what we’re drinking towards. That’s where we’re heading. At full fucking speed.

 

Accelerating into NOWHERE.

I like nowhere. I want to be nowhere.

 

This is like anti-meditation. When you let the void think in you. What’s it thinking about?

Itself. It’s just … pulsing.

Does it ever say anything?

What should it say?

Pulsing. That’s what it does. It just pulses. Like a giant heart.

An anti-heart.

 

No more words. I just want some oblivion. I want to shut down the dome. I want to close things down. I don’t want to THINK anymore.

 

Want to slip off into a coma. Into the blackness. Just go somewhere better. 

 

To welcome death. To know death as a relief. The ease of dying – would you know that – in your last nanoseconds.

The idlest of idle chatter. Thought out of gear, engine idling. Just rumination. Chewing the philosophical cud.

Making the pointlessness worse, by talking about it. Making the pointless even more pointless by making it explicit.

Our philosophical prattle, to add to all the other prattle. To prattle about prattle, doubling up all the other prattle. Our meta-prattle.

 

Words, words. When’s any of us going to act? When are we actually going to do something?

 

Just the usual nothingness talk. The usual pointlessness talk. Just sharing the horror that anything is at all, that we exist at all, that we can talk at all.

 

This isn’t even philosophy. It’s not rigorous. We’re not constructive arguments. We’re not debating, or trying to reach the truth.

 

Lost thoughts. Thoughts undeveloped, that don’t do anything. Just a general sighing.

 

Idle philosophy. Philosophy at rest. Barely even philosophy. At the threshold of philosophy. We never get any further, do we?

 

Is this a protest? A lamentation? A complaint? A keening?

The coast. The gulls, gulling. The sand, sanding. The waves, waving or whatever.

 

The big DFDS ferry. Going where? Norway, or something? Amsterdam? They’re waving. Should we wave back?

 

Looking out at the horizon. What’s coming from over there? Nothing good. 

 

Pickled mussels. Crab-meat sandwiches. Looking across to the south pier. To South Shields.

 

Watching the sea swimmers.

The north sea’s at its warmest now, in November. All these warmish ocean currents.

 

The coast. The edge of the universe.

What’s across there?

Denmark, I think.

I don't believe in Denmark.

That’s where the Vikings came from – those bastards. Flooding into the northeast, York and all that.

I don't believe in Vikings. I don't believe in York.

 

Is this actually how we’re going to spend our lives? Haven’t we got anything better to do?

We’re thinking about the problem of not having anything better to do. That’s what we do.

I’m thought-free. There’s nothing in my head.

Good nothing? Like, exalted nothing? Philosophical nothing? Religious nothing?

Probably just nothing.

Buddhist nothing? Hindu nothing? Coast nothing?

 

We’ve been brought low for a reason. We’re depressed for a reason.

What reason? Why?

Something’s going to reveal itself.

To us? Why us?

We have a role in the drama.

What drama? There is no drama. There’s just random stuff.

 

The universe doesn’t care. The sky doesn’t care. It’s a great blind eye.

We’ve fallen out of the world. We were never in the world.

 

When did it go wrong? When did we become like this? What wrong turn did we take? We were once a son or a daughter or sister and brother, and then?

Here we are, transformed. Old, maybe. Crabbed, maybe. Grown strange. Grown twisted. Grown wrong.

 

We’re thirtysomethings. Supposed to be able to make our way, fulfil our promise. (Laughter.) Supposed to have accomplished something. It’s time now. Supposed to have done something. (Laughter.)

 

And we’ve been trying our hardest, that’s the thing. We’ve been doing our best. But our best … (Laughter.)

 

We’ve been allowed to live. Why? We’ve permitted to live. To do what good? To amount to what? To add what to the world? (Laughter.) Everything we do makes things worse. Even our talking about making things worse makes things worse.

 

I really think we should be struck down. Come on, God, strike us down.

He’s not striking us down.

It’s proof God doesn’t exist. If he did exist, he would already have struck us down. We would never have been allowed to pass our PhDs. To publish things. To get jobs, God knows …

 

We’re waiting for disaster, that's all. We know it’s coming. All our lives. That’s our role: we’re watchers, waiters, ever vigilant. And when it comes – what then? What will happen to us?

Oh we’ll go under straightaway.We’ll be annihilated. In the blink of an eye. We’ll barely know it arrived, the end.

Let it come the fuck down. 

 

And yet we go on. And yet there’s more time – still more. And yet there’s more life. Things are living. We’re living, too. Our hearts are beating. We’re breathing – my God!

The wonder: that our bodies don't just shut down in shame. That there's some capacity to live, after all. Some automatism. Some basic animal perdurance.

We slide on. We stagger on. We wander on. We slump on. We roll on. It’s a miracle! It’s an anti-miracle.

 

How do we distract ourselves from ourselves? That’s the problem.

How do we distract ourselves from the horror? The ceaseless horror, that is everywhere. Of which we’re part.

 

All these animals still animaling. All these insects, still insecting. All these singing things singing, and flying things flying. So blithe, so insouciant … The nature machine. The universe machine. The sea still sea-ing. The sky still sky-ing, The sand …

Yeah, we get the idea.

The way things are. The way they’ll be forever, pretty much.

 

And our chattering, in the mix. Our layer of chatter. Of complaint. Of lamentation. That’s what we bring to the world-party. To the table of the world.

 

Talking bollocks. That’s what we do. That’s just what the world needs – more bollocks. There’s enough talking bollocks.

Yes, but we know we talk bollocks. We know it’s all bollocks.

That’s no excuse. Self-conscious bollocks makes it even worse. We should know better, and keep quiet. Seal up our lips.

That’s the worst thing of all: talking bollocks about being quiet, about wanting to be quiet, etcetera … On it goes, the talking machine. That’s what we bring to the universe of death.

Why are we so fucking low?

We look upwards, but what is it we see? What is it, the sky? 

 

Are we going to live long lives, do you think?

I think we’ll live forever. That’s what I think this afternoon.

 

Are we actually alive? Is this actually it?

All the things we talk about. All the questions we ask.

No one’s going to answer, are they? No one’s interested.

God, maybe. The sky, maybe. The light, maybe.

 

These aren’t questions – they’re prayers. They’re ways of praying. To who? To what?

 

We don’t have to live like this. Things don’t have to be this way.

 

Why are we even talking about this? What’s wrong with us? Why are we so … dissatisfied?

 

We’re ghosts. We’re strangers. Don’t you ever feel like that: a stranger on the earth?

 

How can this world be lifted from us? The weight’s too great … The pressure …

The world, crushing us. Our limbs, so heavy. How can we, like, get up at all? How do we stand upright? How can we get to our feet?

 

Orders of anti-angels. Dark angels. What’s the collective noun?

Hatreds of anti-angels. Horrors of anti-angels. Despairs of anti-angels. Screams of anti-angels. Ghouls …

 

Nothing up there, anyway. There’s nothing we can count on. There’s that light, that’s all. That quivering patch of light.

 

A patch of light. That’s all that’s left. But what does it mean? What does it do?

We’re not leaving this bedroom – ever. This is where we’ll always be. Even when we’re not here.

 

These hours, lost in the afternoon. This afternoon, lost in the day. This day, lost in the week, lost in the year, lost in forever.

 

Doing all this in broad daylight. It’s bright, bright. You can’t hide from the sky. Not here. Not with your skylight.

 

That’s the light of god, quivering on the floor. That’s God – the light. He’s here. He’s with us.

 

Total obscurity. Total irrelevance. We’re castaways of the afternoon, the eternal afternoon.

 

The day’s fallen out of step with itself. Strange lakes of time. Pools of time. Just lying there. Reflecting the sky.

 

The day’s got lost. It’s wandered from itself. We’re calling after it, like a lost dog.

 

We’re in some split off universe. Some ox-bow lake universe that’s broken off from the real one. From the real flow of history. This is where time’s got lost. Where time’s forgetting itself.

 

My God, we’re just wasting time. Cooking this up out of NOTHING. Conjuring it out of NOTHING. Why bother? Why anything?

 

What do we add up to, we two? What do we add to the universe?

 

There’s no one to witness our shamelessness. To really tell us off. To really upbraid us. And there’s no one there, just the … afternoon. Which means we’ll always feel disgusting, just disgusting, because there’s no one to forgive us.

I forgive you.

You can’t forgive me and I can’t forgive you, that’s the problem. Though, God knows, we don’t deserve to be forgiven.

 

I’m glad there isn’t a God to see our shame. In fact, he’d kill himself if he saw us. God would strangle himself in heaven.

 

Stop – you’re making me cry. I always cry when I think of God.

 

We’re falling into the afternoon. Faster and faster.

 

Looking up at the skylight. Look at the sky – so white. Like a great white eye, seeing nothing, just blind. Looking down at us by not looking down at us. Seeing us by not seeing us. Witnessing us by not witnessing us.

 

We’re, like descending and descending. Like a spiral staircase into the earth, just going down and down.

 

The skylight … that’s God’s judgement on us. The absence of judgement. The nothing of God, capital fucking N. God’s fucking Nothingness … God’s here by not being here. God’s present by being absent … A beam of god-light. A shaft of light in our room.

I want to be fucked by a shaft of light.

 

Are we torturing ourselves, or is God torturing us? 

 

Is torture the way God shows himself to us? The thorn in the flesh, right?

 

God’s dead, baby. God’s dead.

Who’s watching through the skylight, then?

No one’s watching through the skylight. Unless your husband’s climbed up there.

I don’t think he’s interested. I don’t think he gives a shit.

Is that why you’re doing this – to make him notice?

 

We’re perverse. We’re disgusting. And we don’t know how to be anything other than disgusting. We want another twist in our disgustingness. We want to surprise ourselves in our disgustingness. We want to indulge in new depravities, just for kicks. We want to go further down the fucking spiral. To see how far we can go.

 

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

About our impurity.

It’s just light, quivering.

Seems peaceful.

It's watching. 

Watching who?

Watching us.

It's blind.

That makes it worse.