Work in Progress

When did it happen, this ruin? When did it begin? Has it ended? Where are we in time? What day is it, and who are we?

It hasn’t ended yet. Nothing’s finished, just as nothing has begun. The ruination can’t be located in time. It’s a mode of experience. A mood. An atmosphere. We’re not in time anymore. We’re not anywhere.


Nothing becomes clear. Nothing’s happened – nothing’s finished happening. It’s not this then that. Where do we locate this? Where does it happen? Who are we?

It can’t be localised. Something decisive has happened. But where is it? When did it happen? Has it finished happening? Is it only about to happen?

Everything’s just … hesitating. There’s delay – that’s all.


It’s like we’re waiting for something. But waiting hasn’t got an object. It’s a state. Waiting is the medium. A mood. An atmosphere.


We talk, but we don’t understand things any better. All the questions remained unanswered.

Livia was raising our apocalyptic hopes.

Why – why was she doing that?

She was making us feel that we could be part of it. Agents of apocalyptic end – and renewal, even.

Why did she flatter us? Why did she want to give a sense of being world-historical? Why did she want to raise our hopes so high?

Because she wanted to see them dashed. She wanted us to know the failure of all eschatologies. The plunge. The decay. Only then … only in true disappointment. Only when confronted with the bland continuation of the world …

Only then, what? Would we understand. She wanted our hopes dashed. But from the highest heights. She wanted us to experience cosmic bathos.

You’ve never really accepted the bathos of life, Shiva – that’s your problem. The prose of the world. Which is why you can’t actually write it, real prose, the sort that people actually want to read. Which is why you’re all hyperbole and exclamation marks. You can’t bear life that is less than apocalyptic.


You’ll never finish the idiotbuch. There’ll never be a final page.

Because the book of life will be idiotic. It’ll be just more of this. The book of life is full of the prose of life, which runs on forever. And it’s not even a farce. It’s Sensible. It’s Orderly.

Is this Mother’s simulation or yours? Have you enclosed me in the pages of a book? Me without me, without my body. Me sans me. You can deal with this me, can’t you? Wistful. Woozy. Mad, even. A little mad. Organisational Management gone mad. You like that, don’t you? O.M. gone philosophical.

The me you can handle. That you don’t have to fuck. That doesn’t profane.

The me without a body. The me who can’t fuck you or be fucked or bear your child. A spirit, right? Just as you’re a spirit. And we’re talking like two spirits in the dark.

You want to hear me speak. To just run on. To give you something for your idiotbuch. That’s what you’re writing. That’s what this is.


It’s my turn to talk – from now until forever. But really, I’m not saying anything. I’m suspending speech. I’m just being vague and woozy and a bit mad. Which, as it turns out, is just as you like it.


And I won’t bear your child. I won’t be pregnant with your child. Imagine that could have been your legacy on earth: a child, and not a book – not an idiotbuch. But you’ve opted for the idiotbuch …


You want me to say the things you’d like to say. You’ve given it to me: the speech you’d like to hear. You want to hear your anguish said by someone else – by an organisational manager. You want to hear philosophical anguish translated into the language of Organisational Management.


You want me to unleashed by madness, to be nothing but madness, talking. Does madness talk? What does madness say? What does wooziness say? This, maybe.


You want to simulate me. Me talking. You want to make me live forever. In place of you, maybe. Instead of you, maybe.

This is what Livia knew was going to happen – or not happen.

Livia wanted to complete our Gnosticism, by making us pass through the failure of our apocalyptic hopes.

Because we do hope, despite everything. It’s a perverse hope – a twisted hope – but it’s still hope. The hope that’s someone’s going to stop us. Someone’s going to put an end to it – and us. That someone – God, maybe – will call time on the whole disaster.


We were never hopeless enough. Never despairing enough. We didn’t accept the endlessness.

But now – with the thirteen bottle of wine? And with what follows the thirteen bottle of wine, i.e., nothing? NOTHING – in capital letters?

Nothing is going to change. Nothing’s going to happen. The empire lasts forever. It’ll only ever be Rome AKA Babylon AKA the whole shitstem, and isn’t that the point?


We don’t want to be reconciled to this world – not this world. Still the hope that our idiocy will turn itself out and reveal itself as anything but idiocy. That disgust won’t really be disgust, but a way of savouring sweetness, and goodness. That the most disgusting wine will be the most perfect wine, from the perfect terroir. The New Jerusalem terroir, or whatever …

The great lesson is that banality wins. Is that the mundane wins. The world will last forever.

Will it?


You can cry for the end all you want. You can think that cry is the purest cry of all. But the end won’t come. Nothing will actually happen. Death isn’t going to come because you want it to. Isn’t that the great lesson?


The disgusting will always be disgusting and it won’t mean anything. Isn’t that painful?


Bathos is what you’re frightened of. The everyday – that’s the most frightening thing of all to you. Ordinary life and ordinary people. The world just going on. Imagine that: the world just going on. Look at you shudder.


Because you think it’s all in terribly bad taste, this going on. This endless survival. You think you’re in some kind of bad taste – so bad, that it should offend Someone. God maybe. Who would just strike you out.

The fact is that there is no Good Taste. That the adults aren’t in the room. That God’s not in his heaven …

Anything goes in these times. It’s just contortion in these times. It’s just twistedness, in these times. It’s grotesquerie, that’s all.

And that’s what life is, in these times – continuing beyond the point when it would have to make sense.

Day follows day. Day succeeds day, and what does it amount to? Can’t someone just put us down? Put us humanely to sleep? Wouldn’t that be the thing?


We’ve finished drinking. We can throw the empty bottle down and … what? We can drain it to the dregs and … nothing. Nothing happens. Livia doesn’t return at the moment of our deepest need. Death doesn’t come with his scythe, to cut off our heads. The candle snuffer doesn’t snuff us out. The apocalypse disappoints us.


And we’re still alive, still going. How awful! How awful for everything, how awful for us! Aren’t we all tired of our lamentations? Have we ever done anything other than lament?

The last hope is the hope for the end. Isn’t that what we’ve reached: the last hope, which is the purest hope? The hope that is only for cessation. Only for disaster.

The last hope is for the finish line. The no-more-again hope. The oh-all-to-end hope. The this-time-that’s-it hope.

But it won’t end, will it?


The world won’t die. The world is the world, even in ruins. The ruins are still part of the world. It goes on. It goes on even more.


What gets in the way of the end of the world is the world. The world is the obstacle. The world is what means there’ll be no end to the world.


You want it to End. You ache for the end.

You want it all to end. To save you from actually having to kill yourself.


God’s become just death for you – just destruction, which I suppose is apt.

Thirteenth bottle – look, Shiva’s getting excited. He thinks he’s going to achieve samsara.


The thirteen bottle. Is the end really nigh? Of course not. Are you ready for the anticlimax? For the bathos?


What’ll happen after the thirteenth bottle’s drunk – that’s the question. And what’s the answer?

Nothing. Nothing will happen. We sit here, like cunts in the ruins.

Cunts of the ruins – I like that.

Just another phase of our journey into dust. In our travels in nihilon.

Why do we bother?

We don’t bother. Do you think this is bothering?


What’s going to happen when the end doesn’t come – what then? When it just goes on and on?

You’re waiting for the transubstantiation of disgusting wine into – what? The wine of truth. The wine of the true vine. You’re hoping for the miracle of inversion.


You’re waiting for the dialectical flip. You’re waiting for the disgusting to become un-disgusting. Well, you’ll be waiting a long time. You’re waiting for transcendence to intervene. The hand of God, or the void, or whatever. For things to just … turn around, but that’s not going to happen. You’re waiting for the inversion to invert. For Deliverance. For the Miracle. But you’ll be waiting forever.


If only we have dialectical taste buds. If only we had dialectical capacities, as Livia had. Then this would be the sweetest nectar.


The thirteen bottle: our last chance to show that we have Livian taste buds. That our palates could be educated. Could be dialectised. That a ray from heaven could shine into our wine cups.

You’ve gone, postgraduates. You’ve left this wicked place. You’ve found the escape route. Climbed up the rope and disappeared. Yanked yourself up by your bootstraps. Escaped into another, better universe. You’ve left this disgusting world behind. Gone where the organisational managers cannot find you.