Work in Progress

Why did the paragrads always want to live in the ruins?

Because the world was ruined – spiritually, at least. They wanted to live in truth. They wanted to be departing – like, perpetually departing. They obeyed a call – Moses’s call. Abraham’s call. They were a people on the move – spiritually, not actually. Which calls for ruination. Which means slash and burn. They didn’t want the world to have a hold over them. They didn’t want to be crushed by the world.

They were tramps, in other words. They were just more disgustings in a disgusting world. More filth in a world of filth.

They knew the present form of the world was ending. They had no investment of the world as it was. They knew it was passing, that everything is passing. They lived in the end – at the brink of the end. As the end ended. But the end was always ending.

There’s a way of living in the endtimes. There’s a way of being in the endless endtimes.

Lived Gnosticism – just what Livia was looking for.

Maybe Livia joined them. Maybe she went underground.

This … darkness. It’s kind of glowy. There are glowing things on the wall.

It’s a glowing mould.

Mould’s what the paras cultivate. They actually live on mould – on different kinds of mould. There are moulds for all purposes under fucking heaven for the paragrads.

The paras had no sky. How did they cope?

They had an earth-sky. They had the sky of boulder clay.

They had no light.

They had mould light.

They had no food.

They had mould. Very good for you, mould. Like blue cheese mould. Other mould. And they fermented stuff. They’re very into fermented food.

Yay paragrads.

Brainfood – they were really into that. It was all about brainfood. About eating right.

What’s terrible is the way they’ve mobilised the Newcastle earth. How they’ve made Newcastle boulder clay simply something to crush us with. As though it were simply their medium. Their way of smothering of us. When we always thought the Newcastle earth was on our side.

How are going to relieve the pressure? I think we need a lumbar puncture, or something. A skull puncture.

We need fucking trepanning. To crack open the skull. There are people who swear by that – trepanning. Let the air in. Let the air circulate around the brain.

We’d need a drill for that. Has anyone brought a drill? Trepanning’s good for thinking, apparently. Some of the greatest philosophers were trepanned. Deleuze wasn’t anyone before his trepanning. Guattari did it with a hand drill, apparently. It was a real ‘60s thing.

I’ve got an underground headache. Does being underground give you headache?

Fiver’s got a nosebleed.

Get him to lie down. Lie down, Fiver. Tilt your head back. God, look at what they’re doing to our departmental seer.

Our seer hasn’t been very seer-y lately. Give us something, Fiver. How about a vision?

This is where we should plant the explosives. Like Guy Fawkes did, right? Blow it all up.

Have you got any explosives?

Maybe we should think of mental explosives. There are other kinds of war. Like, demoralisation tactics. All the stuff those Chinese generals wrote about. And those Russian defectors.

So we’re going to demoralise the organisational managers? That’s how we’re going to fight back? Maybe.

The campus is in my head, man.

The foundations are, like, drilling down. The foundations have been sharpened into points and are drilling down. Into our heads! Into our souls!

They’re crushing us. They’re drilling through us. They’re merciless.

It’s ontological hatred. They cannot help but hate us. They cannot but want to destroy us. We’re aberrants, to them. We’re things to be destroyed.

We’re not just to be merely swept aside. Not carefully unpicked. Not targeted with bespoke and attentive insults, as Livia’s insults were bespoke and attentive. Not immaculately shaped put-downs, like Livia’s.

It’s not all about our legitimate strangeness. We’re not special idiots to these Organisational Management fuckers, right? They don’t give a fuck about our special stupidity that Livia was trying so hard to cultivate. We’re not Livia’s special idiots to them …

It’s impersonal destruction. It’s indifferent. They want to wipe us out – that’s all. They want to utterly destroy us and all trace of us and all memory of us. Which is why we have to keep a record of these things. Why you have to write them down, Shiva.

This whole corpse world. This whole revolting mess. That Livia smelt. And that she wanted us to smell. And taste …

Why, to depress us?

No, so we’d turn elsewhere.

Where – to the light? Go towards the light, and all that?

To transcendence. To empty, contentless transcendence. To the hole where God used to be.

That’s what Livia worshipped?

Who said anything about worship?

There should be no more idolatry, that’s what Livia said. We should see the void as what it is. As the Nothing – the divine Nothing.