Work in Progress

What are we searching for in our disgust? What is being revealed to us through our disgust? That everything is disgusting? That the world is disgusting? The fact that we’re not entirely subject to it, the world. That we’re not entirely a part of it, the world. That something in us can say, no.

I want to feel the hatred. Inside me. The world turning its true face towards us. And to meet the world in hatred – in perfect hatred.

We weren’t supposed to love it, the world. We were supposed to be appalled by it, the world. Which we already were, in part …

Our instincts were right, Livia said. We only had to be encouraged.

We have to be vigilant! Alert! For the new ways we’re being lied to. The new ways in which we’re being fooled. We mustn’t relax our guard …

The rich European terroir – all its flavours, all its nuances. Gone! There’s no richness left. No nuance.

Poison and lies: that’s the European terroir, just as it’s the terroir everywhere.

The only terroir is poisoned and the only wine is poisoned wine. Everything else is a lie.

Which is why disgust is our truest response, our first response – and it must be our response to everything. They’ve poisoned the air. They’ve poisoned the earth. They’ve poisoned us – God knows. They’ve left nothing alone. They’ve turned everything disgusting. And that’s what we have to know. A new kind of wine drinker: that’s what’s required. A new non-connoisseur. The anti-gourmand who drinks only poison. A poison without flavours. Without nuances; just poison.

Livia’s wine, as a philosophy. Who brewed it? Where did it come from? What vines produced this? From what grape did it come? In what barrels was it left?

We have to try and understand what Livia wanted for us.

So we should drink.

Of course we should. Drink! Drink! Of course. That’s all we can do! It’s pretty much all we know how to do!

We never understood her, Livia.

Of course we didn’t. She was twice our age – more! On the verge of retirement! And she was always broader than we were. She’d come from another world – an Eastern European world.

She could have been awesomely good or awesomely evil. We couldn’t tell. We couldn’t read her. We couldn’t understand her.

She was beyond us. She came from another world. She knew things. She knew things. The whole of maths … of physics, as well as philosophy.

We didn’t know her plans, Livia. Her purposes were alien to us. The game she was playing with the university. Her Great Game.

And there was her philosophical game. We could hardly grasp her philosophy. I think we’re only beginning to get it now, her philosophy. Her Gnosticism. Her anti-worldism.

Our drinking lesson. Our drunken lesson. Our Livia tutorials.

This is all we have of Livia now. Her wine. The wine she collected. That she put aside, after her departure.

Her cellar, as she called it, but it wasn’t really a cellar. There were a few bottles. Thirteen, I think. That’s all.

Thirteen bottles! And how many have we drunk? How many do we have to go? What are we going to learn after thirteen bottles?

We’re supposed to hate it, this world. We’re being taught to hate it. Not to trust it. To look beyond it. To taste beyond it.

We’re to look upwards. And away. Never to be taken in. Never to be deluded.

No – we have to convert the poison. Turn the poison into something good. Is that possible? To convert the world, maybe.

It shows us the curse, this wine. It’s a curse – the whole thing. We know that. The poison that flows inside us is only a … confirmation. The lies we hear. They’re all part of the logic of the world, of the world’s unfolding.

In wine is truth, right? We know our compromise. We know we’ve been thrown into an abyss. Just by being born. Onto this planet. Into this world.

The original sin – is that it? To have been born at all. To be alive at all. To have lived at all. That’s the sin. This wine teaches us that.