Work in Progress

We should have gone down with the ship. Thrown ourselves on Livia’s funeral pyre.

Livia didn’t actually die.

No one ever accepts that they’re an idiot, Shiva, Livia said. No one ever calls themselves an idiot and means it. They think they’re smart enough to know their so-called idiocy. As though they could outwit it. As though they might master it, by calling it idiocy; and by that they are thereby most assuredly not idiots. And that’s what my literaro-philosophy was for me, she said: my method of mastery. Which was a method of denial!

But in the end, I could only fail. And fail failure! Fail my failure as a literary writer and as a philosophical one.

Did I really think I could outwit stupidity itself? That I’d made a move that changed the game? My role was only to deepen it, my idiocy. To fulfil it. To set the seal upon my idiocy. By writing the book that could only be the book of my idiocy. And idiocy in general. The book of the Mercia Philosophy Department. And even Livia’s idiocy. The idiocy of it all – all of the humanities. All of the university. And the universe too – why not?

My book of idiocy – Livia’s book of idiocy: the same. My iteraro-philosophical project – Livia’s idiotenprojekt: you couldn’t tell them apart. I was the official writer-up of the idiotenprojekt. Its anamnuesis. Its scribe. I was to write Livia’s magnum opus.

Livia gave us new names – but these were the names we wanted, in our deepest selves. Our names were the names of our desires, as she saw them. Our deepest yearning. Which she knew! To which she was responding!

She was giving us our real names, our true names, just as Adam named the world in the Garden.

The Organisational Management move is just intensifying things. Pushing us into extremity. Everything’s becoming even more disgusting. Who’s going to kill themselves first?

Is it a competition?


Organisational Management is the way the world is going, not just the university. We were going to be organised and managed sooner or later. Livia saw what was coming. She just made it happen a little earlier, that’s all.


She wanted it for us, that’s all. She thought it stop us sinking complacency and becoming career academics, or whatever.

How dare the sun shine, when we’re feeling so gloomy!? How dare there be a day at all!? How dare the sun even rise! How dare there be a sky! How dare there be a sea! How dare there be … these dreadful blocks of flats.

How dare North Shields exist, let alone South Shields! We’ve had enough of existing things. And existence in general.

How dare anything be! Continue to be! Continue to exist! How dare that we ourselves continue to exist!

The calamity that we are! Which is at one with the general calamity. The bad taste of it all! The bad taste that anything continue to exist! The bad taste of a sunny day, in the midst of horror!

Ah, why does it only register in us, this hatred of all things for themselves? The way the world is appalled by itself? The temerity! The outrage! Why are we the only ones who know it?


Auto-horror. Auto-hatred. Auto-disgust. At ourselves! Ourselves first of all!

And Livia was going to detonate it – the bomb of our stupidity. Which has a very long fuse. A fuse stretching from here … to wherever she is. She’s going to push down the plunger.

And do you know what: the Organisational Management move is the detonator.

Really?

This is the latest phase of Livia’s war against Organisational Management. She’s playing 5D chess. O.M. will never know what’s hit ‘em.

What we are! What we could be! Behind enemy lines! Placed carefully. Lodged where we might do the most damage! Ready to be set off by the right trigger words. Like some sleeper cell – so asleep that we don’t even know who we are.

We have to invert the disgust, somehow. Let it become … what? Change it. Convert it.


We have to reach the greater disgust – that’s the thing. Find our way to the Disgust with Everything.


Drunk with disgust. Drunk from disgust.


Gazelle hasn’t even had any of the wine yet. Suck it down, Gazelle – see what it does to you. Maybe you’ll reach the Greater Disgust straightaway. A sign of your advanced spiritual evolution.


A toast: to poison. And to lies! Don’t forget lies! And to the opposite of poison, the opposite of lies! To tensions. To contradictions. To the Most Low and to the Most High!


We were especially attuned to this. We were formed to taste it, this disgust. It’s like having a very fine palate. It’s like being a connoisseur.

All the flavours of disgust. All the foulness. That’s what we can taste. In all its nuances. In all its … subtleties.


To the antidote! To truth! To the Most Low and to the Most High. To tensions. To contradictions. To opposites. To extremes!


The diseased terroir. The fouled terroir. That’s what we’re drinking: disease. That’s what we’re drinking: the foulness. That’s what’s running in our bloodstream. In our digestive tract.

It probably crossed the blood-brain barrier, long ago . It’s accumulating in our brain. In our reproductive organs. It’s giving us neurological damage and heart damage and strange new cancers …


The pedagogy of disgust. The pedagogy of revulsion.


We don’t deserve death. We don’t warrant an end. We have to keep going. So we can become as disgusting as possible. Reach the point of maximum disgustingness.

We’re already there. No we’re not!


Disgust isn’t just psychological. It isn’t some mental state. It’s ontological.


When disgust gets existential, that’s when things really start.

Uma’s, like, the boss teacher, instructing the gods about the ultimate reality – about Brahman. She’s really serene and philosophical. The gods are kinda arrogant. They think they know everything.

Then this mysterious appears to them. Something really enigmatic, like the monoliths in 2001 or something. The gods are scratching their heads, wandering what it is.

Then Indra, who’s, like, king of the gods, admits that he doesn’t know – that he can’t know. That he’s ignorant. An important moment. And he asks for enlightenment. He asks God – he discovers humility.

And Uma appears to tell him that he’s seeing Brahman, ultimate reality. Or an aspect of reality. That makes all experience possible. By whose will does the mind think? By whose command does the breath move? By whose presence do speech and sight function?’

The answer is, Brahman, philosopher. From the lips of Uma. The power behind every power. Who can only be revealed from calm, serene Uma …


What’s out there’s in you, too. That’s what I remember. Brahman’s the unknown. We can’t dominate it. We can’t even face it directly. And it’s silent – the ultimate, silent reality. Uma – in the Upanishad – speaks of it, but only to show that it’s beyond speech. Brahman’s all about awakening.


I’ll bet Mother knows all about Brahman.


Mother’s about the earth, philosopher. She’s about life and fertility and creativity and nurturing. The earth as a living, nurturing force and all that. Cycles of life – birth and growth and death and renewal. Care and power. Protecting her offspring. I think she has a lot to do with Brahman.


‘He who thinks he knows It, does not know it / He who knows that he does not know It, knows It’. That’s what it says, philosopher. You can’t know Brahman.


Brahman is ‘that which the eye cannot see, that which the mind cannot think, that which speech cannot express’. yet because of Brahman, the eye sees. Because of Brahman, the mind thinks. Because of Brahman, speech speaks … What does that mean?

That Brahman is the condition for experience, not part of experience.


Ask your questions to Mother, philosopher. ‘By whose will does the mind think, Mother? By whose command does the breath move? By whose presence do speech and sight function?’

I’ve been known to wear a sari.


We actually had an India wedding. It was in Vienna, where my parents live. We flew a priest out. A long blessing. Alan was an angel. He liked the exoticism. The priest looked like something straight from the comics. You know – those Indian comics.

Amar Chitra Katha. Sure, I know them.

Which was your favourite? My dad used to buy us the spiritually elevating ones. Kinda dull. The one about Sankara. And about that sage who went about in the nude. We had the bumper collection about Vishnu’s avatars, too. The fish, the lion man, Rama and Krishna – the lot.


Can you speak Hindi?

No.

Tamil?

No.

Not can I. Well, malayalam. We always spoke English at home. My parents. Even my grandparents. That’s what they decided.


I studied a bit of Sanskrit. I went to an evening class. It was hard. The way you were supposed to combine the words. Sandhi, right? We read the Upanishads. I can’t remember which ones. I can’t remember anything.


My family are Keralan. Keralan Christians. But I know all the Hindu stories.


Do you go back, ever?

We went when my dad died. That was a while ago. Not since then.


We’re not made for this weather, are we?

This wind. This wind is fierce.

It’s okay if you’re dressed right.

Are you saying I’m not dressed right?

My dad’s never got used to the cold. He’s always cold, in the middle of summer. Our kind’s made for the heat, philosopher.

Teach yourself Sanskrit books. Is that really what you’re doing? I can remember some Sanskrit. My dad taught me. Tat Tvam Asi. Do you remember that?

That thou art.

Exactly. And I’m actually named after an Upanishad. Or a character in an Upanishad. Or something.


Learning Sanskrit: that’s what you should be doing. Writing about Indian philosophy. Drawing on the Indian Imaginarium.


We should embrace the Indian Imaginarium, philosopher. The Indian archives. Probably all kinds of things in the Puranas.


Indian mythology is just there to be raided.


There are funding opportunities, philosophy. We could put in a research bid together – wouldn’t that be romantic?

Unlocking the Archive: Management lessons from the Puranas. How about that? What’s Sanskrit for Management? Lessons from the Upanishads: now that’s a book title. Could be a real airport book in Chennia and Hyderabad …